Thomas Hardy

After the War

Last Post sounded
Across the mead
To where he loitered
With absent heed.
Five years before
In the evening there
Had flown that call
To him and his Dear.
‘You’ll never come back;
Good-bye!’ she had said;
‘Here I’ll be living,
And my Love dead!’

Those closing minims
Had been as shafts darting
Through him and her pressed
In that last parting;
They thrilled him not now,
In the selfsame place
With the selfsame sun
On his war-seamed face.
‘Lurks a god’s laughter
In this?’ he said,
‘That I am the living
And she the dead!’