Explore "In the Vaulted Way" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IN the vaulted way, where the passage turned / To the shadowy corner that none could see, / You paused for our parting,-plaintively; / Though overnight had come words that burned / My fond frail happiness out of me.
And then I kissed you,-despite my thought / That our spell must end when reflection came / On what you had deemed me, whose one long aim / Had been to serve you; that what I sought / Lay not in a heart that could breathe such blame.
But yet I kissed you; whereon you again / As of old kissed me. Why, why was it so? / Do you cleave to me after that light-tongued blow? / If you scorned me at eventide, how love then? / The thing is dark, Dear. I do not know.