An Anniversary by Thomas Hardy

IT was at the very date to which we have come, / In the month of the matching name, / When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum, / Its couch-time at night being the same. / And the same path stretched here that people now follow, / And the same stile crossed their way, / And beyond the same green hillock and hollow / The same horizon lay; / And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.

Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness; / But the tree that neighbours the track, / And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness, / Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack. / And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded / With mosses of many tones, / And the garth up afar was not overcrowded / With a multitude of white stones, / And the man's eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the / socket-bones.