Explore "His Immortality" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. I SAW a dead man's finer part / Shining within each faithful heart / Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be / His immortality."
II. I looked there as the seasons wore, / And still his soul continuously upbore / Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled / Than when I first beheld.
III. His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then / In later hearts I looked for him again; / And found him-shrunk, alas! into a thin / And spectral mannikin.
IV. Lastly I ask-now old and chill- / If aught of him remain unperished still; / And find, in me alone, a feeble spark, / Dying amid the dark.