Explore "Before Marching and After" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(_in Memoriam F. W. G._)
ORION swung southward aslant / Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, / The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant / With the heather that twitched in the wind; / But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, / Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow, / And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.
The crazed household-clock with its whirr / Rang midnight within as he stood, / He heard the low sighing of her / Who had striven from his birth for his good; / But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze, / What great thing or small thing his history would borrow / From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.
When the heath wore the robe of late summer, / And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun, / Hung red by the door, a quick comer / Brought tidings that marching was done / For him who had joined in that game overseas / Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow / A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.