Read "Self-Unconscious" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
ALONG the way / He walked that day, / Watching shapes that reveries limn, / And seldom he / Had eyes to see / The moment that encompassed him.
Bright yellowhammers / Made mirthful clamours, / And billed long straws with a bustling air, / And bearing their load / Flew up the road / That he followed, alone, without interest there.
From bank to ground / And over and round / They sidled along the adjoining hedge; / Sometimes to the gutter / Their yellow flutter / Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.
The smooth sea-line / With a metal shine, / And flashes of white, and a sail thereon, / He would also descry / With a half-wrapt eye / Between the projects he mused upon.
Yes, round him were these / Earth's artistries, / But specious plans that came to his call / Did most engage / His pilgrimage, / While himself he did not see at all.
Dead now as sherds / Are the yellow birds, / And all that mattered has passed away; / Yet God, the Elf, / Now shows him that self / As he was, and should have been shown, that day.
O it would have been good / Could he then have stood / At a focussed distance, and conned the whole, / But now such vision / Is mere derision, / Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.
Not much, some may / Incline to say, / To see therein, had it all been seen. / Nay! he is aware / A thing was there / That loomed with an immortal mien.