Explore "On Sturminster Foot-Bridge. (Onomatopoeic)" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
RETICULATIONS creep upon the slack stream's face / When the wind skims irritably past, / The current clucks smartly into each hollow place / That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base; / The floating-lily leaves rot fast.
On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows, / Till they arrow off and drop like stones / Among the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows; / And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows / As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.