Poem by Thomas Hardy

Her Second Husband Hears Her Story

‘Still, Dear, it is incredible to me
That here, alone,
You should have sewed him up until he died,
And in this very bed. I do not see
How you could do it, seeing what might betide.’

‘Well, he came home one midnight, liquored deep –
Worse than I’d known –
And lay down heavily, and soundly slept:
Then, desperate driven, I thought of it, to keep
Him from me when he woke. Being an adept

‘With needle and thimble, as he snored, click-click
An hour I’d sewn,
Till, had he roused, he couldn’t have moved from bed,
So tightly laced in sheet and quilt and tick
He lay. And in the morning he was dead.

‘Ere people came I drew the stitches out,
And thus ’twas shown
To be a stroke.’ – ‘It’s a strange tale!’ said he.
‘And this same bed?’ – ‘Yes, here it came about.’
‘Well, it sounds strange – told here and now to me.

‘Did you intend his death by your tight lacing?’
‘O, that I cannot own.
I could not think of else that would avail
When he should wake up, and attempt embracing.’ –
‘Well, it’s a cool queer tale!’

1. V.R. 1819–1901
2. Life and Death at Sunrise
3. Genitrix Laesa
4. Song from Heine
5. Music in a Snowy Street

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