Explore "Outside the Casement" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR)
WE sat in the room / And praised her whom / We saw in the portico-shade outside: / She could not hear / What was said of her, / But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.
Then in was brought / That message, fraught / With evil fortune for her out there, / Whom we loved that day / More than any could say, / And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.
And the question pressed / Like lead on each breast, / Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell? / It was too intense / A choice for our sense, / As we pondered and watched her we loved so well.
Yea, spirit failed us / At what assailed us; / How long, while seeing what soon must come, / Should we counterfeit / No knowledge of it, / And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?
And thus, before / For evermore / Joy left her, we practised to beguile / Her innocence when / She now and again / Looked in, and smiled us another smile.