Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Man Who Forgot

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met
I sat upon a gate;
I saw the sun decline and set,
And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way
And roused me from my thought;
I called to him, and showed where lay
A spot I shyly sought.

‘A summer-house fair stands hidden where
You see the moonlight thrown;
Go, tell me if within it there
A lady sits alone.’

He half demurred, but took the track,
And silence held the scene;
I saw his figure rambling back;
I asked him if he had been.

‘I went just where you said, but found
No summer-house was there:
Beyond the slope ’tis all bare ground;
Nothing stands anywhere.

‘A man asked what my brains were worth;
The house, he said, grew rotten,
And was pulled down before my birth,
And is almost forgotten!’

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;
Forty years’ frost and flower
Had fleeted since I’d used to come
To meet her in that bower.

1. The Supplanter
2. Afternoon Service at Mellstock
3. At the Word ‘Farewell’
4. Tragedian to Tragedienne
5. The Three Tall Men

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