Read "The Tree and the Lady" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I HAVE done all I could / For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her, / Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her, / Home from the heath or the wood.
At the mirth-time of May, / When my shadow first lured her, I'd donned my new bravery / Of greenth: 'twas my all. Now I shiver in slavery, / Icicles grieving me gray.
Plumed to every twig's end / I could tempt her chair under me. Much did I treasure her / During those days she had nothing to pleasure her; / Mutely she used me as friend.
I'm a skeleton now, / And she's gone, craving warmth. The rime sticks like a skin to me; / Through me Arcturus peers; Nor'lights shoot into me; / Gone is she, scorning my bough!