Read "In Time of Wars and Tumults" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"WOULD that I'd not drawn breath here! " some one said, / "To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds, / Where purposelessly month by month proceeds / A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread."
Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead / To the gross spectacles of this our day, / And never put on the proffered cloak of clay, / He had but known not things now manifested;
Life would have swirled the same. Morns would have dawned / On the uprooting by the night-gun's stroke / Of what the yester noonshine brought to flower;
Brown martial brows in dying throes have wanned / Despite his absence; hearts no fewer been broke / By Empery's insatiate lust of power.