Poem by Thomas Hardy

In a London Flat

I

‘You look like a widower,’ she said
Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,
As he sat by the fire in the outer room,
Reading late on a night of gloom,
And a cab-hack’s wheeze, and the clap of its feet
In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,
Were all that came to them now and then. . . . 
‘You really do!’ she quizzed again.

II

And the Spirits behind the curtains heard,
And also laughed, amused at her word,
And at her light-hearted view of him.
‘Let’s get him made so – just for a whim!’
Said the Phantom Ironic. ‘’Twould serve her right
If we coaxed the Will to do it some night.’
‘O pray not!’ pleaded the younger one,
The Sprite of the Pities. ‘She said it in fun!’

III

But so it befell, whatever the cause,
That what she had called him he next year was;
And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere,
He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there,
And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores,
At the empty bed through the folding-doors
As he remembered her words; and wept
That she had forgotten them where she slept.

1. The Supplanter
2. Afternoon Service at Mellstock
3. At the Word ‘Farewell’
4. The Children and Sir Nameless
5. Tragedian to Tragedienne

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