Poem by Thomas Hardy

Her Reproach

Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame’s far summits be,
Whose inclines many a skeleton overlies
That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to eclipse it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment; musing, ‘He, too, had his day!’

1. The Aërolite
2. Genitrix Laesa
3. V.R. 1819–1901
4. Song from Heine
5. The Bad Example

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