The Torn Letter by Thomas Hardy

I. I tore your letter into strips / No bigger than the airy feathers / That ducks preen out in changing weathers / Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

II. In darkness on my bed alone / I seemed to see you in a vision, / And hear you say: "Why this derision / Of one drawn to you, though unknown?"

III. Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course, / The night had cooled my hasty madness; / I suffered a regretful sadness / Which deepened into real remorse.

IV. I thought what pensive patient days / A soul must know of grain so tender, / How much of good must grace the sender / Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

V. Uprising then, as things unpriced / I sought each fragment, patched and mended; / The midnight whitened ere I had ended / And gathered words I had sacrificed.

VI. But some, alas, of those I threw / Were past my search, destroyed for ever: / They were your name and place; and never / Did I regain those clues to you.

VII. I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed, / My track; that, so the Will decided, / In life, death, we should be divided, / And at the sense I ached indeed.

VIII. That ache for you, born long ago, / Throbs on; I never could outgrow it. / What a revenge, did you but know it! / But that, thank God, you do not know.