Thomas Hardy

Love Watches a Window

‘Here in the window beaming across
Is he – the lineaments like him so! –
The saint whose name I do not know,
With the holy robe and the cheek aglow.
Here will I kneel as if worshipping God
When all the time I am worshipping you,
Whose Love I was –
You that with me will nevermore tread anew
The paradise-paths we trod!’

She came to that prominent pew each day,
And sat there. Zealously she came
And watched her Love – looking just the same
From the rubied eastern tracery-frame –
The man who had quite forsaken her
And followed another, it was thought. –
Be ’t as it may,
Thinner, more thin, was the lady’s figure wrought
By some ache, year on year.

Well, now she’s dead, and dead is he
From whom her heart once drew delight,
Whose face glowed daily, lover-bright,
High in the glass before her sight.
And still the face is seen as clear
In the rubied eastern window-gleam
As formerly;
But not seen now is a passioned woman’s dream
Glowing beside it there.