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1840–1928

“WHY BE AT PAINS?”

Thomas Hardy

Why be at pains that I should know You sought not me? Do breezes, then, make features glow So rosily?

Come, the lit port is at our back, And the tumbling sea; Elsewhere the lampless uphill track To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands? I am alone, You would enrich me more than lands By being my own.

Yet, though this facile moment flies, Close is your tone, And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries I plough the unknown.

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“WHY BE AT PAINS?” · Thomas Hardy · Poetry Cove