Explore "The Whitewashed Wall" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WHY does she turn in that shy soft way / Whenever she stirs the fire, / And kiss to the chimney-corner wall, / As if entranced to admire / Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight / Of a rose in richest green? / I have known her long, but this raptured rite / I never before have seen.
-Well, once when her son cast his shadow there, / A friend took a pencil and drew him / Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines / Had a lifelike semblance to him. / And there long stayed his familiar look; / But one day, ere she knew, / The whitener came to cleanse the nook, / And covered the face from view.
"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush, / And the draught is buried under; / When you have to whiten old cots and brighten, / What else can you do, I wonder? " / But she knows he's there. And when she yearns / For him, deep in the labouring night, / She sees him as close at hand, and turns / To him under his sheet of white.