Explore "The Enemy's Portrait" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
HE saw the portrait of his enemy, offered / At auction in a street he journeyed nigh, / That enemy, now late dead, who in his life-time / Had injured deeply him the passer-by. / "To get that picture, pleased be God, I'll try, / And utterly destroy it; and no more / Shall be inflicted on man's mortal eye / A countenance so sinister and sore!"
And so he bought the painting. Driving homeward, / "The frame will come in useful," he declared, / "The rest is fuel. " On his arrival, weary, / Asked what he bore with him, and how he fared, / He said he had bid for a picture, though he cared / For the frame only: on the morrow he / Would burn the canvas, which could well be spared, / Seeing that it portrayed his enemy.