Read "A Wet August" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
NINE drops of water bead the jessamine, / And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: / -'Twas not so in that August-full-rayed, fine- / When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.
Or was there then no noted radiancy / Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough, / Gilt over by the light I bore in me, / And was the waste world just the same as now?
It can have been so: yea, that threatenings / Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray, / By the then possibilities in things / Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.