Read "At Lulworth Cove a Century Back" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
HAD I but lived a hundred years ago / I might have gone, as I have gone this year, / By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know, / And Time have placed his finger on me there:
"_You see that man_? "-I might have looked, and said, / "O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought / Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head. / So commonplace a youth calls not my thought."
"_You see that man_? "-"Why yes; I told you; yes: / Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue; / And as the evening light scants less and less / He looks up at a star, as many do."
"_You see that man_? "-"Nay, leave me! " then I plead, / "I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea, / And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed: / I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!
"Good. That man goes to Rome-to death, despair; / And no one notes him now but you and I: / A hundred years, and the world will follow him there, / And bend with reverence where his ashes lie. "