Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Wednesday Poetry: "The Voice," by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was best known as a novelist, but he wrote those only to make his living. During the last three decades of his life, he turned himself to his true passion, poetry. Hardy claims, "My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own."

"The Voice"
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

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