Explore "Former Beauties" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THESE market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn, / And tissues sere, / Are they the ones we loved in years agone, / And courted here?
Are these the muslined pink young things to whom / We vowed and swore / In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom, / Or Budmouth shore?
Do they remember those gay tunes we trod / Clasped on the green; / Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod / A satin sheen?
They must forget, forget! They cannot know / What once they were, / Or memory would transfigure them, and show / Them always fair.