Thomas Hardy

The Last Performance

‘I am playing my oldest tunes,’ declared she,
‘All the old tunes I know, –
Those I learnt ever so long ago.’
– Why she should think just then she’d play them
Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall
Notes continued to pour
As when I had left two hours before:
‘It’s the very last time,’ she said in closing;
‘From now I play no more.’

A few morns onward found her fading,
And, as her life outflew,
I thought of her playing her tunes right through;
And I felt she had known of what was coming,
And wondered how she knew.