Thomas Hardy

The Gap in the White

Something had cracked in her mouth as she slept,
Having danced with the Prince long, and sipped his gold tass;
And she woke in alarm, and quick, breathlessly, leapt
Out of bed to the glass.

And there, in the blue dawn, her mouth now displayed
To her woe, in the white
Level line of her teeth, a black gap she had made
In a dream’s nervous bite.

‘O how can I meet him to-morrow!’ she said.
‘I’d won him – yes, yes! Now, alas, he is lost!’
(That age knew no remedy.) Duly her dread
Proved the truth, to her cost.

And if you could go and examine her grave
You’d find the gap there,
But not understand, now that science can save,
Her unbounded despair.