Read "The Impercipient" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)
THAT from this bright believing band / An outcast I should be, / That faiths by which my comrades stand / Seem fantasies to me, / And mirage-mists their Shining Land, / Is a drear destiny.
Why thus my soul should be consigned / To infelicity, / Why always I must feel as blind / To sights my brethren see, / Why joys they've found I cannot find, / Abides a mystery.
Since heart of mine knows not that ease / Which they know; since it be / That He who breathes All's Well to these / Breathes no All's-Well to me, / My lack might move their sympathies / And Christian charity!
I am like a gazer who should mark / An inland company / Standing upfingered, with, "Hark! hark! / The glorious distant sea! " / And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark / And wind-swept pine to me!"
Yet I would bear my shortcomings / With meet tranquillity, / But for the charge that blessed things / I'd liefer have unbe. / O, doth a bird deprived of wings / Go earth-bound wilfully!
Enough. As yet disquiet clings / About us. Rest shall we.