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THE WALK / 1881
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
30 In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
35 I held the vessel to rinse in the fall, Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
40 Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe0 violent pang From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
45 And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
'By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
50 Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine.'
1914
The Walk
You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
5 You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind. I walked up there to-day
io Just in the former way:
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
15 Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence.
1912-13 1914
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1882 / THOMAS HARDY
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair. s Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I
