Read "Starlings on the Roof" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"NO smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, / The people who lived here have left the spot, / And others are coming who knew them not.
"If you listen anon, with an ear intent, / The voices, you'll find, will be different / From the well-known ones of those who went."
"Why did they go? Their tones so bland / Were quite familiar to our band; / The comers we shall not understand."
"They look for a new life, rich and strange; / They do not know that, let them range / Wherever they may, they will get no change.
"They will drag their house-gear ever so far / In their search for a home no miseries mar; / They will find that as they were they are,
"That every hearth has a ghost, alack, / And can be but the scene of a bivouac / Till they move perforce-no time to pack! "