Читать книгу Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 11

I tore your letter into strips

   No bigger than the airy feathers

   That ducks preen out in changing weathers

Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

In darkness on my bed alone

   I seemed to see you in a vision,

   And hear you say: “Why this derision

Of one drawn to you, though unknown?”

Yes, eve’s quick mood had run its course,

   The night had cooled my hasty madness;

   I suffered a regretful sadness

Which deepened into real remorse.

I thought what pensive patient days

   A soul must know of grain so tender,

   How much of good must grace the sender

Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

Uprising then, as things unpriced

   I sought each fragment, patched and mended;

   The midnight whitened ere I had ended

And gathered words I had sacrificed.

But some, alas, of those I threw

   Were past my search, destroyed for ever:

   They were your name and place; and never

Did I regain those clues to you.

I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,

   My track; that, so the Will decided,

   In life, death, we should be divided,

And at the sense I ached indeed.

That ache for you, born long ago,

   Throbs on; I never could outgrow it.

   What a revenge, did you but know it!

But that, thank God, you do not know.