Томас Гарди (Харди) (Thomas Hardy)

The Two Wives

   (Smoker’s Club-Story)

I waited at home all the while they were boating together –
My wife and my near neighbour’s wife:
Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,
And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
With a sense that some mischief was rife.

Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
Was drowned – which of them was unknown:
And I marvelled – my friend’s wife? – or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
– We learnt it was his had so gone.

Then I cried in unrest: ‘He is free! But no good is releasing
To him as it would be to me!’
‘ – But it is,’ said the woman I loved, quietly.
‘How?’ I asked her. ‘– Because he has long loved me too without ceasing,
And it’s just the same thing, don’t you see.’

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