Explore "I Said and Sang her Excellence" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(_Fickle Lover's Song_)
I SAID and sang her excellence: / They called it laud undue. / (Have your way, my heart, O! ) / Yet what was homage far above / The plain deserts of my olden Love / Proved verity of my new.
"She moves a sylph in picture-land, / Where nothing frosts the air: " / (Have your way, my heart, O! ) / "To all winged pipers overhead / She is known by shape and song," I said, / Conscious of licence there.
I sang of her in a dim old hall / Dream-built too fancifully, / (Have your way, my heart, O! ) / But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead / My feet to such a hall indeed, / Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn / I had glanced down unborn time, / (Have your way, my heart, O! ) / And prophesied, whereby I knew / That which the years had planned to do / In warranty of my rhyme.
BY RUSHY-POND.