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)

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I

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.


Poems of the Past and the Present

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