Читать книгу Poems of the Past and the Present - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 9
WAR POEMS
A WIFE IN LONDON
(December, 1899)
ОглавлениеI
THE TRAGEDY
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He – has fallen – in the far South Land.
II
THE IRONY
’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh – firm – penned in highest feather —
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.