Explore "For Life I had Never Cared Greatly" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
FOR Life I had never cared greatly, / As worth a man's while; / Peradventures unsought, / Peradventures that finished in nought, / Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately / Unwon by its style.
In earliest years-why I know not- / I viewed it askance; / Conditions of doubt, / Conditions that leaked slowly out, / May haply have bent me to stand and to show not / Much zest for its dance.
With symphonies soft and sweet colour / It courted me then, / Till evasions seemed wrong, / Till evasions gave in to its song, / And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller / Than life among men.
Anew I found nought to set eyes on, / When, lifting its hand, / It uncloaked a star, / Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar, / And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon / As bright as a brand.
And so, the rough highway forgetting, / I pace hill and dale / Regarding the sky, / Regarding the vision on high, / And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting / My pilgrimage fail.