Poem by Thomas Hardy

She Hears the Storm

There was a time in former years –
While my roof-tree was his –
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,
‘The pricking rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old.’

But now the fitful chimney-roar,
The drone of Thorncombe trees,
The Froom in flood upon the moor,
The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves-drops on the window flicked,
The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;
He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.

1. V.R. 1819–1901
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3. Genitrix Laesa
4. Song from Heine
5. Music in a Snowy Street

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