At Castle Boterel
Thomas Hardy
1840 to 1928
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As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, to what it led, –
Something that life will be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval form the road’s steep border,
And much have they there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s order;
But what they record in colour and cast
– that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, when that night
Saw us alight.
I look and it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it the rain
For the very last time; for my is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
again.
March 1913