Read "At the Word "Farewell"" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
SHE looked like a bird from a cloud / On the clammy lawn, / Moving alone, bare-browed / In the dim of dawn. / The candles alight in the room / For my parting meal / Made all things withoutdoors loom / Strange, ghostly, unreal.
The hour itself was a ghost, / And it seemed to me then / As of chances the chance furthermost / I should see her again. / I beheld not where all was so fleet / That a Plan of the past / Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet / Was in working at last:
No prelude did I there perceive / To a drama at all, / Or foreshadow what fortune might weave / From beginnings so small; / But I rose as if quicked by a spur / I was bound to obey, / And stepped through the casement to her / Still alone in the gray.
"I am leaving you. Farewell! " I said, / As I followed her on / By an alley bare boughs overspread; / "I soon must be gone! " / Even then the scale might have been turned / Against love by a feather, / -But crimson one cheek of hers burned / When we came in together.