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Thomas Hardy - Ditty
Work rating: Low

BENEATH a knap where flown
        Nestlings play,
     Within walls of weathered stone,
        Far away
     From the files of formal houses,
     By the bough the firstling browses,
     Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
     No man barters, no man sells
        Where she dwells.

     Upon that fabric fair
        "Here is she!"
     Seems written everywhere
        Unto me.
     But to friends and nodding neighbors,
     Fellow wights in lot and labors,
     Who descry the times as I,
     No such lucid legend tells
        Where she dwells.

     Should I lapse to what I was
        In days by—
     (Such cannot be, but because
        Some loves die
     Let me feign it)—none would notice
     That where she I know by rote is
     Spread a strange and withering change,
     Like a drying of the wells
        Where she dwells.

     To feel I might have kissed—
        Loved as true—
     Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
        My life through,
     Had I never wandered near her,
     Is a smart severe—severer
     In the thought that she is nought,
     Even as I, beyond the dells
        Where she dwells.

     And Devotion droops her glance
        To recall
     What bond-servants of Chance
        We are all.
     I but found her in that, going
     On my errant path unknowing,
     I did not out-skirt the spot
     That no spot on earth excels—
        Where she dwells!
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