The Well-Beloved by Thomas Hardy

I wayed by star and planet shine / Towards the dear one's home / At Kingsbere, there to make her mine / When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood / Beside the Ikling Way, / Nigh where the Pagan temple stood / In the world's earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked / On gravel and on green, / I sang to sky, and tree, or talked / Of her I called my queen.

-"O faultless is her dainty form, / And luminous her mind; / She is the God-created norm / Of perfect womankind!"

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed / Glode softly by my side, / A woman's; and her motion seemed / The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile / Adown the ancient leaze, / Where once were pile and peristyle / For men's idolatries.

-"O maiden lithe and lone, what may / Thy name and lineage be, / Who so resemblest by this ray / My darling? -Art thou she?"

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within / Her father's grange and grove. " / -"Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, / "Thou art not she I love."

-"Nay: though thy bride remains inside / Her father's walls," said she, / "The one most dear is with thee here, / For thou dost love but me."

Then I: "But she, my only choice, / Is now at Kingsbere Grove? " / Again her soft mysterious voice: / "I am thy only Love."

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, / "O sprite, that cannot be! ". / It was as if my bosom bled, / So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred / To her dull form awhile / My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, / My gestures and my smile.

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, / Brides are not what they seem; / Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; / I am thy very dream!"

-"O then," I answered miserably, / Speaking as scarce I knew, / "My loved one, I must wed with thee / If what thou say'st be true!"

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: / "Though, since troth-plight began, / I've ever stood as bride to groom, / I wed no mortal man!"

Thereat she vanished by the Cross / That, entering Kingsbere town, / The two long lanes form, near the fosse / Below the faneless Down.

-When I arrived and met my bride, / Her look was pinched and thin, / As if her soul had shrunk and died, / And left a waste within.