Read "The West-Of-Wessex Girl" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A VERY West-of-Wessex girl, / As blithe as blithe could be, / Was once well-known to me, / And she would laud her native town, / And hope and hope that we / Might sometime study up and down / Its charms in company.
But never I squired my Wessex girl / In jaunts to Hoe or street / When hearts were high in beat, / Nor saw her in the marbled ways / Where market-people meet / That in her bounding early days / Were friendly with her feet.
Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl, / When midnight hammers slow / From Andrew's, blow by blow, / As phantom draws me by the hand / To the place-Plymouth Hoe- / Where side by side in life, as planned, / We never were to go!