His Visitor by Thomas Hardy — Read

I COME across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker / To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: / I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, / And need no setting open of the long familiar door / As before.

The change I notice in my once own quarters! / A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, / The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, / And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea / As with me.

I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants; / They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong, / But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here, / Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song / Float along.

So I don't want to linger in this re-decked dwelling, / I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold, / And I make again for Mellstock to return here never, / And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold / Souls of old.