Explore "On the Death-Bed" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I'LL tell-being past all praying for- / Then promptly die. He was out at the war, / And got some scent of the intimacy / That was under way between her and me; / And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost / One night, at the very time almost / That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead, / And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.
"The news of the battle came next day; / He was scheduled missing. I hurried away, / Got out there, visited the field, / And sent home word that a search revealed / He was one of the slain; though, lying alone / And stript, his body had not been known.
"But she suspected. I lost her love, / Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above; / And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score, / Though it be burning for evermore. "