Explore "They Would not Come" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I TRAVELLED to where in her lifetime / She'd knelt at morning prayer, / To call her up as if there; / But she paid no heed to my suing, / As though her old haunt could win not / A thought from her spirit, or care.
I went where my friend had lectioned / The prophets in high declaim, / That my soul's ear the same / Full tones should catch as aforetime; / But silenced by gear of the Present / Was the voice that once there came!
Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet / I stood, to recall it as then: / The same eluding again! / No vision. Shows contingent / Affrighted it further from me / Even than from my home-den.
When I found them no responders, / But fugitives prone to flee / From where they had used to be, / It vouched I had been led hither / As by night wisps in bogland, / And bruised the heart of me!