Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))
The Man Who Forgot
At a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate; I saw the sun decline and set, And still was fain to wait. A trotting boy passed up the way And roused me from my thought; I called to him, and showed where lay A spot I shyly sought. ‘A summer-house fair stands hidden where You see the moonlight thrown; Go, tell me if within it there A lady sits alone.’ He half demurred, but took the track, And silence held the scene; I saw his figure rambling back; I asked him if he had been. ‘I went just where you said, but found No summer-house was there: Beyond the slope ’tis all bare ground; Nothing stands anywhere. ‘A man asked what my brains were worth; The house, he said, grew rotten, And was pulled down before my birth, And is almost forgotten!’ My right mind woke, and I stood dumb; Forty years’ frost and flower Had fleeted since I’d used to come To meet her in that bower.
Thomas Hardy’s other poems:
916
