Poem by Thomas Hardy

Drawing Details in an Old Church

I hear the bell-rope sawing,
And the oil-less axle grind,
As I sit alone here drawing
What some Gothic brain designed;
And I catch the toll that follows
From the lagging bell,
Ere it spreads to hills and hollows
Where people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,
Incurious who he be;
So, some morrow, when those knolls for
One unguessed, sound out for me,
A stranger, loitering under
In nave or choir,
May think, too, ‘Whose, I wonder?’
But not inquire.

1. The Aërolite
2. Genitrix Laesa
3. V.R. 1819–1901
4. Song from Heine
5. The Bad Example

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