Thomas Hardy

Ditty

(E. L. G.)
 
    BENEATH a knap where flown
       Nestlings play,
    Within walls of weathered stone,
       Far away
    From the files of formal houses,
    By the bough the firstling browses,
    Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
    No man barters, no man sells
       Where she dwells.
 
    Upon that fabric fair
       “Here is she!”
    Seems written everywhere
       Unto me.
    But to friends and nodding neighbors,
    Fellow wights in lot and labors,
    Who descry the times as I,
    No such lucid legend tells
       Where she dwells.
 
    Should I lapse to what I was
       In days by—
    (Such cannot be, but because
       Some loves die
    Let me feign it)—none would notice
    That where she I know by rote is
    Spread a strange and withering change,
    Like a drying of the wells
       Where she dwells.
 
    To feel I might have kissed—
       Loved as true—
    Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
       My life through,
    Had I never wandered near her,
    Is a smart severe—severer
    In the thought that she is nought,
    Even as I, beyond the dells
       Where she dwells.
 
    And Devotion droops her glance
       To recall
    What bond-servants of Chance
       We are all.
    I but found her in that, going
    On my errant path unknowing,
    I did not out-skirt the spot
    That no spot on earth excels—
       Where she dwells!
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