Explore "To Meet, or Otherwise" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WHETHER to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams, / Or whether to stay / And see thee not! How vast the difference seems / Of Yea from Nay / Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams / At no far day / On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!
Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make / The most I can / Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian / Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache, / While still we scan / Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.
By briefest meeting something sure is won; / It will have been: / Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done, / Unsight the seen, / Make muted music be as unbegun, / Though things terrene / Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.
So, to the one long-sweeping symphony / From times remote / Till now, of human tenderness, shall we / Supply one note, / Small and untraced, yet that will ever be / Somewhere afloat / Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life's antidote.