Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))
Her Second Husband Hears Her Story
‘Still, Dear, it is incredible to me That here, alone, You should have sewed him up until he died, And in this very bed. I do not see How you could do it, seeing what might betide.’ ‘Well, he came home one midnight, liquored deep – Worse than I’d known – And lay down heavily, and soundly slept: Then, desperate driven, I thought of it, to keep Him from me when he woke. Being an adept ‘With needle and thimble, as he snored, click-click An hour I’d sewn, Till, had he roused, he couldn’t have moved from bed, So tightly laced in sheet and quilt and tick He lay. And in the morning he was dead. ‘Ere people came I drew the stitches out, And thus ’twas shown To be a stroke.’ – ‘It’s a strange tale!’ said he. ‘And this same bed?’ – ‘Yes, here it came about.’ ‘Well, it sounds strange – told here and now to me. ‘Did you intend his death by your tight lacing?’ ‘O, that I cannot own. I could not think of else that would avail When he should wake up, and attempt embracing.’ – ‘Well, it’s a cool queer tale!’
Thomas Hardy’s other poems:
