Explore "At Waking" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WHEN night was lifting, / And dawn had crept under its shade, / Amid cold clouds drifting / Dead-white as a corpse outlaid, / With a sudden scare / I seemed to behold / My Love in bare / Hard lines unfold.
Yea, in a moment, / An insight that would not die / Killed her old endowment / Of charm that had capped all nigh, / Which vanished to none / Like the gilt of a cloud, / And showed her but one / Of the common crowd.
She seemed but a sample / Of earth's poor average kind, / Lit up by no ample / Enrichments of mien or mind. / I covered my eyes / As to cover the thought, / And unrecognize / What the morn had taught.
O vision appalling / When the one believed-in thing / Is seen falling, falling, / With all to which hope can cling. / Off: it is not true; / For it cannot be / That the prize I drew / Is a blank to me!