Explore "The Contretemps" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A FORWARD rush by the lamp in the gloom, / And we clasped, and almost kissed; / But she was not the woman whom / I had promised to meet in the thawing brume / On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.
So loosening from me swift she said: / "O why, why feign to be / The one I had meant! -to whom I have sped / To fly with, being so sorrily wed! " / -'Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.