Thomas Hardy

A Winsome Woman

    (Song)

There’s no winsome woman so winsome as she;
Some are flower-like in mouth,
Some have fire in the eyes,
Some feed a soul’s drouth
Trilling words music-wise;
But where are these gifts all in one found to be
Save in her known to me?

What her thoughts are I read not, but this much I know,
That she, too, will pass
From the sun and the air
To her cave under grass;
And the world will declare,
‘No such woman as his passioned utterances show
Walked this planet, we trow!’