Poem by Thomas Hardy

* * *

I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon’s full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head
Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,
‘What are you doing there?’

‘Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole
And waterway hereabout
For the body of one with a sunken soul
Who has put his life-light out.

‘Did you hear his frenzied tattle?
It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,
Though he has injured none.

‘And now I am curious to look
Into the blinkered mind
Of one who wants to write a book
In a world of such a kind.’

Her temper overwrought me,
And I edged to shun her view,
For I felt assured she thought me
One who should drown him too.

1. The Paphian Ball
2. After the Death of a Friend
3. The Superseded
4. To Carrey Clavel
5. The Hatband

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