Explore "The Sunshade" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AH-it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade, / Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink, / Merely a naked sheaf of wires! - / Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers / Since it was silked in its white or pink.
Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade, / No more a screen from the weakest ray; / Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes, / Nothing but rusty bones as it lies / In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.
Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade / Up and down this seaside place? - / Little thumb standing against its stem, / Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem, / Softening yet more the already soft face!
Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade / A skeleton just as her property is, / Laid in the chink that none may scan? / And does she regret-if regret dust can- / The vain things thought when she flourished this?
SWANAGE CLIFFS.