Explore "A Two-Years' Idyll" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
YES; such it was; / Just those two seasons unsought, / Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways; / Moving, as straws, / Hearts quick as ours in those days; / Going like wind, too, and rated as nought / Save as the prelude to plays / Soon to come-larger, life-fraught: / Yes; such it was.
"Nought" it was called, / Even by ourselves-that which springs / Out of the years for all flesh, first or last, / Commonplace, scrawled / Dully on days that go past. / Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings / Even in hours overcast: / Aye, though this best thing of things, / "Nought" it was called!
What seems it now? / Lost: such beginning was all; / Nothing came after: romance straight forsook / Quickly somehow / Life when we sped from our nook, / Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall... / -A preface without any book, / A trumpet uplipped, but no call; / That seems it now.