Explore "She Charged Me" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SHE charged me with having said this and that / To another woman long years before, / In the very parlour where we sat,-
Sat on a night when the endless pour / Of rain on the roof and the road below / Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .
-So charged she me; and the Cupid's bow / Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face, / And her white forefinger lifted slow.
Had she done it gently, or shown a trace / That not too curiously would she view / A folly passed ere her reign had place,
A kiss might have ended it. But I knew / From the fall of each word, and the pause between, / That the curtain would drop upon us two / Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.