Read "Her Reproach" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
CON the dead page as 'twere live love: press on! / Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee; / Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan / To biting blasts that are intent on me.
But if thy object Fame's far summits be, / Whose inclines many a skeleton o'erlies / That missed both dream and substance, stop and see / How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!
It surely is far sweeter and more wise / To water love, than toil to leave anon / A name whose glory-gleam will but advise / Invidious minds to quench it with their own,
And over which the kindliest will but stay / A moment, musing, "He, too, had his day! "