Thomas Hardy - The Telegram
'O He's suffering - maybe dying - and I not there to aid, <br />And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go? <br />Only the nurse's brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed, <br />As by stealth, to let me know. <br /> <br />'He was the best and brightest! - candour shone upon his brow, <br />And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he, <br />And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he's sinking now, <br />Far, far removed from me!' <br /> <br />- The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, <br />And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, <br />And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware <br />That she lives no more a maid, <br /> <br /> <br />But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod <br />To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known <br />In its last particular to him - aye, almost as to God, <br />And believed her quite his own. <br /> <br /> <br />So great her absentmindedness she droops as in a swoon, <br />And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace, <br />And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon <br />At this idle watering-place…. <br /> <br /> <br />What now I see before me is a long lane overhung <br />With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave. <br />And I would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young, <br />Ere a woman held me slave.<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-telegram-3/
