Thomas Hardy

What Did It Mean?

What did it mean that noontide, when
You bade me pluck the flower
Within the other woman’s bower,
Whom I knew nought of then?

I thought the flower blushed deeplier – aye,
And as I drew its stalk to me
It seemed to breathe: ‘I am, I see,
Made use of in a human play.’

And while I plucked, upstarted sheer
As phantom from the pane thereby
A corpse-like countenance, with eye
That iced me by its baleful peer –
Silent, as from a bier... 

When I came back your face had changed,
It was no face for me;
O did it speak of hearts estranged,
And deadly rivalry
In times before
I darked your door,
To seise me of
Mere second love,
Which still the haunting first deranged?