Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))
A Popular Personage at Home
‘I live here: “Wessex” is my name: I am a dog known rather well: I guard the house; but how that came To be my whim I cannot tell. ‘With a leap and a heart elate I go At the end of an hour’s expectancy To take a walk of a mile or so With the folk I let live here with me. ‘Along the path, amid the grass I sniff, and find out rarest smells For rolling over as I pass The open fields towards the dells. ‘No doubt I shall always cross this sill, And turn the corner, and stand steady, Gazing back for my mistress till She reaches where I have run already, ‘And that this meadow with its brook, And bulrush, even as it appears As I plunge by with hasty look, Will stay the same a thousand years.’ Thus ‘Wessex’. But a dubious ray At times informs his steadfast eye, Just for a trice, as though to say, ‘Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?’
1924
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