Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Change

Out of the past there rises a week –
Who shall read the years O! –
Out of the past there rises a week
Enringed with a purple zone.
Out of the past there rises a week
When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,
And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.

In that week there was heard a singing –
Who shall spell the years, the years! –
In that week there was heard a singing,
And the white owl wondered why.
In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,
And forth from the casement were candles flinging
Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.

Could that song have a mocking note? –
Who shall unroll the years O! –
Could that song have a mocking note
To the white owl’s sense as it fell?
Could that song have a mocking note
As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,
And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?

In a tedious trampling crowd yet later –
Who shall bare the years, the years! –
In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,
When silvery singings were dumb;
In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,
Mid murks of night I stood to await her,
And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come.

She said with a travel-tired smile –
Who shall lift the years O! –
She said with a travel-tired smile,
Half scared by scene so strange;
She said, outworn by mile on mile,
The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,
‘O Love, I am here; I am with you!’... Ah, that there should have come a change!

O the doom by someone spoken –
Who shall unseal the years, the years! –
O the doom that gave no token,
When nothing of bale saw we:
O the doom by someone spoken,
O the heart by someone broken,
The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.

1. The Supplanter
2. Afternoon Service at Mellstock
3. At the Word ‘Farewell’
4. Tragedian to Tragedienne
5. The Three Tall Men

Henry King, Bishop of Chichester The Change ("We lov'd as friends now twenty years and more")

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