Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))
Intra Sepulchrum
What curious things we said, What curious things we did Up there in the world we walked till dead, Our kith and kin amid! How we played at love, And its wildness, weakness, woe; Yes, played thereat far more than enough As it turned out, I trow! Played at believing in gods And observing the ordinances, I for your sake in impossible codes Right ready to acquiesce. Thinking our lives unique, Quite quainter than usual kinds, We held that we could not abide a week The tether of typic minds. – Yet people who day by day Pass by and look at us From over the wall in a casual way Are of this unconscious; And feel, if anything, That none can be buried here Removed from commonest fashioning, Or lending note to a bier: No twain who in heart-heaves proved Themselves at all adept, Who more than many laughed and loved, Who more than many wept, Or were as sprites or elves Into blind matter hurled, Or ever could have been to themselves The centre of the world.
Thomas Hardy’s other poems:
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