Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))
At a House in Hampstead
Sometime the Dwelling of John Keats O Poet, come you haunting here Where streets have stolen up all around, And never a nightingale pours one Full-throated sound? Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills, Thought you to find all just the same Here shining, as in hours of old, If you but came? What will you do in your surprise At seeing that changes wrought in Rome Are wrought yet more on the misty slope One time your home? Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs? Swing the doors open noisily? Show as an umbraged ghost beside Your ancient tree? Or will you, softening, the while You further and yet further look, Learn that a laggard few would fain Preserve your nook?... – Where the Piazza steps incline, And catch late light at eventide, I once stood, in that Rome, and thought, ‘’Twas here he died.’ I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot, Where day and night a pyramid keeps Uplifted its white hand, and said, ‘’Tis there he sleeps.’ Pleasanter now it is to hold That here, where sang he, more of him Remains than where he, tuneless, cold, Passed to the dim.
July 1920
Thomas Hardy’s other poems:
925
