Poem by Thomas Hardy

Every Artemisia

‘Your eye-light wanes with an ail of care,
Frets freeze gray your face and hair.’

‘I was the woman who met him,
Then cool and keen,
Whiling away
Time, with its restless scene on scene
Every day.’

‘Your features fashion as in a dream
Of things that were, or used to seem.’

‘I was the woman who won him:
Steadfast and fond
Was he, while I
Tepidly took what he gave, nor conned
Wherefore or why.’

‘Your house looks blistered by a curse,
As if a wraith ruled there, or worse.’

‘I was the woman who slighted him:
Far from my town
Into the night
He went... My hair, then auburn-brown,
Pangs have wanned white.’

‘Your ways reflect a monstrous gloom;
Your voice speaks from within a tomb.’

‘I was the woman who buried him:
My misery
God laughed to scorn:
The people said: “ ’Twere well if she
Had not been born!” ’

‘You plod to pile a monument
So madly that your breath is spent.’

‘I am the woman who god him:
I build, to ease
My scalding fires,
A temple topping the Deities’
Fanes of my sires.’

1. Genitrix Laesa
2. The Sleep-Worker
3. Song from Heine
4. Nothing Matters Much
5. Timing Her

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