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Thomas Hardy : The Voice of Things

Forty Augusts—aye, and several more—ago,
	When I paced the headlands loosed from dull 
					employ,
The waves huzza’d like a multitude below
	In the sway of an all-including joy
		Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
	When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,
And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic 
					laughter
	At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
		Things that be. 

Wheeling change has set me again standing where
	Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;
But they supplicate now—like a congregation there
	Who murmur the Confession—I outside,
		Prayer denied. 

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)	?

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