Читать книгу Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 30

I dwelt in the shade of a city,

   She far by the sea,

With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;

   But never with me.

Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring

   I never once met,

To guide her with accents adoring

   Through Weippert’s “First Set.” 1

I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones

   In Vanity Fair,

And she enjoyed hers among hale ones

   In salt-smelling air.

Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,

   Maybe they were blue,

Maybe as she aged they got duller;

   That never I knew.

She may have had lips like the coral,

   But I never kissed them,

Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,

   Nor sought for, nor missed them.

Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,

   Between us, nor thrill;

We’d never a husband-and-wife time,

   For good or for ill.

Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,

   Lie I and lies she,

This never-known lady, eternal

   Companion to me!