Poem by Thomas Hardy

Music in a Snowy Street

The weather is sharp,
But the girls are unmoved:
One wakes from a harp,
The next from a viol,
A strain that I loved
When life was no trial.

The tripletime beat
Bounds forth on the snow,
But the spry springing feet
Of a century ago,
And the arms that enlaced
As the couples embraced,
Are silent old bones
Under graying gravestones.

The snow-feathers sail
Across the harp-strings,
Whose throbbing threads wail
Like love-satiate things.
Each lyre’s grimy mien,
With its rout-raising tune,
Against the new white
Of the flake-laden noon,
Is incongruous to sight,
Hinting years they have seen
Of revel at night
Ere these damsels became
Possessed of their frame.

O bygone whirls, heys,
Crotchets, quavers, the same
That were danced in the days
Of grim Bonaparte’s fame,
Or even by the toes
Of the fair Antoinette, –
Yea, old notes like those
Here are living on yet! –
But of their fame and fashion
How little these know
Who strum without passion
For pence, in the snow!

1. V.R. 1819–1901
2. Life and Death at Sunrise
3. Genitrix Laesa
4. Song from Heine
5. Paths of Former Time

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