Poem by Thomas Hardy

Expectation and Experience

‘I had a holiday once,’ said the woman –
Her name I did not know –
‘And I thought that where I’d like to go,
Of all the places for being jolly,
And getting rid of melancholy,
Would be to a good big fair:
And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
And my shoulders, face and hair;
And I found that I was the single woman
In the field – and looked quite odd there!
Everything was spirit-quenching:
I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
To think, and could not tell at all
What on earth made me plod there!’

1. The End of the Episode
2. The Month’s Calendar
3. The Strange House
4. On a Discovered Curl of Hair
5. There Seemed a Strangeness

Print

1574 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version