| Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898. |
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| 46. In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury |
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| THE YEARS have gathered grayly | |
| Since I danced upon this leaze | |
| With one who kindled gayly | |
| Love’s fitful ecstasies! | |
| But despite the term as teacher, | 5 |
| I remain what I was then | |
| In each essential feature | |
| Of the fantasies of men. | |
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| Yet I note the little chisel | |
| Of ever-napping Time, | 10 |
| Defacing ghast and grizzel | |
| The blazon of my prime. | |
| When at night he thinks me sleeping, | |
| I feel him boring sly | |
| Within my bones, and heaping | 15 |
| Quaintest pains for by-and-by. | |
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| Still, I’d go the world with Beauty, | |
| I would laugh with her and sing, | |
| I would shun divinest duty | |
| To resume her worshipping. | 20 |
| But she’d scorn my brave endeavor, | |
| She would not balm the breeze | |
| By murmuring, “Thine for ever!” | |
As she did upon this leaze.
1887–1890. | |
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