Читать книгу Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 12

While rain, with eve in partnership,

Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,

Beyond the last lone lamp I passed

   Walking slowly, whispering sadly,

   Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:

Some heavy thought constrained each face,

And blinded them to time and place.

The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed

In mental scenes no longer orbed

By love’s young rays.  Each countenance

   As it slowly, as it sadly

   Caught the lamplight’s yellow glance

Held in suspense a misery

At things which had been or might be.

When I retrod that watery way

Some hours beyond the droop of day,

Still I found pacing there the twain

   Just as slowly, just as sadly,

   Heedless of the night and rain.

One could but wonder who they were

And what wild woe detained them there.

Though thirty years of blur and blot

Have slid since I beheld that spot,

And saw in curious converse there

   Moving slowly, moving sadly

   That mysterious tragic pair,

Its olden look may linger on —

All but the couple; they have gone.

Whither?  Who knows, indeed.. And yet

To me, when nights are weird and wet,

Without those comrades there at tryst

   Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,

   That lone lane does not exist.

There they seem brooding on their pain,

And will, while such a lane remain.