Read "Logs on the Hearth. a Memory of a Sister" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THE fire advances along the log / Of the tree we felled, / Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck / Till its last hour of bearing knelled.
The fork that first my hand would reach / And then my foot / In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now / Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.
Where the bark chars is where, one year, / It was pruned, and bled- / Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last, / Its growings all have stagnated.
My fellow-climber rises dim / From her chilly grave- / Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, / Laughing, her young brown hand awave.