Explore "A Wife in London" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(_December_, 1899)
I. THE TRAGEDY
SHE sits in the tawny vapour / That the City lanes have uprolled, / Behind whose webby fold on fold / Like a waning taper / The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly, / Flashed news is in her hand / Of meaning it dazes to understand / Though shaped so shortly: / _He-has fallen-in the far South Land_ . . .
II. THE IRONY
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, / The postman nears and goes: / A letter is brought whose lines disclose / By the firelight flicker / His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh-firm-penned in highest feather- / Page-full of his hoped return, / And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn / In the summer weather, / And of new love that they would learn.