Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Son’s Portrait

I walked the streets of a market town,
And came to a lumber-shop,
Which I had known ere I met the frown
Of fate and fortune,
And habit led me to stop.

In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
High, low, or edgewise thrown,
I lit upon something lying flat –
A fly-flecked portrait,
Framed. ’Twas my dead son’s own.

‘That photo? . . . A lady – I know not whence –
Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
With more. You can have it for eighteenpence:
The picture’s nothing;
It’s but for the frame you pay.’

He had given it her in their heyday shine,
When she wedded him, long her wooer:
And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
And fell there fighting;
And she took a new bridegroom to her.

I bought the gift she had held so light,
And buried it – as ’twere he. –
Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
But when one’s lonely
How cruel they can be!

1. Genitrix Laesa
2. V.R. 1819–1901
3. Song from Heine
4. Over the Coffin
5. Life and Death at Sunrise

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