Explore "I Looked up from my Writing" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I LOOKED up from my writing, / And gave a start to see, / As if rapt in my inditing, / The moon's full gaze on me.
Her meditative misty head / Was spectral in its air, / And I involuntarily said, / "What are you doing there?"
"Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole / And waterway hereabout / For the body of one with a sunken soul / Who has put his life-light out.
"Did you hear his frenzied tattle? / It was sorrow for his son / Who is slain in brutish battle, / Though he has injured none.
"And now I am curious to look / Into the blinkered mind / Of one who wants to write a book / In a world of such a kind."
Her temper overwrought me, / And I edged to shun her view, / For I felt assured she thought me / One who should drown him too.