The Voice
Thomas Hardy
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.
Can it be you that I hear? Let
me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near
to the town
Where you would wait for me:
yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue
gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in
its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead
to me here,
You being ever dissolved to
wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or
near?
Thus I; faltering
forward,
Leaves around me
falling,
Wind oozing thin through the
thorn from norward,
And the woman
calling.
Time Does Not Bring Relief
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
