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Thomas Hardy: The Dead Man Walking

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Ward Hill #3 (Andover, Massachusetts): photo by Jim Rohan (LowerDarnley), 14 January 2014


They hail me as one living,
      But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
      Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
      A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
      Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,
      Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
      In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
      No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
      On to this death ....

-- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
      With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
      In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
      The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
      A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
      Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
      I died yet more;

And when my Love's heart kindled
      In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
      One more degree.

And if when I died fully
      I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
      I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling
      The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
      I live not now.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): The Dead Man Walking, from Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses, 1909




Ward Hill #2 (Andover, Massachusetts): photo by Jim Rohan (LowerDarnley), 13 January 2014



Nelson Island #1 (Rowley, Massachusetts): photo by Jim Rohan (LowerDarnley), 12 January 2014

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