Explore "At the Altar-Rail" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"MY bride is not coming, alas! " says the groom, / And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own / It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room / When I went to the Cattle-Show alone, / And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps, / And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.
"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife- / 'Twas foolish perhaps! -to forsake the ways / Of the flaring town for a farmer's life. / She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says: / ‘_It's sweet of you_, _dear_, _to prepare me a nest_, / _But a swift_, _short_, _gay life suits me best_. / _What I really am you have never gleaned_; / _I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned_. "