The Phantom Horsewoman
Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the
In the seaward
With moveless
And face and gaze,
Then turns to go…And what does he see when he gazes so?
They say he sees as an instant
More clear than today,
A sweet soft
That once was in
By that briny green;
Yes, notes
Warm, real, and keen,
What his back years bring-A phantom of his own figuring.
Of this vision of his they might say more:
Not only
Does he see this sight,
But
In his brain-day, night,
As if on the
It were drawn rose bright-Yea, far from that
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:
A ghost-girl-rider.
And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides
In his rapt
On that shagged and
Atlantic spot,
And as when first
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.
Thomas Hardy
Other author posts
In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations
Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk Only a thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass...
I Said To Love
I said to Love,It is not now as in old When men adored thee and thy ways All else above; Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the Who spread a heaven beneath the sun, I said to Love
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their househol...
Neutral Tones
WE stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod, —They had fallen from an ash, and were gray Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles solved year...