| Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898. |
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| 34. Unknowing |
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| WHEN, soul in soul reflected, | |
| We breathed an æthered air, | |
| When we neglected | |
| All things elsewhere, | |
| And left the friendly friendless | 5 |
| To keep our love aglow, | |
| We deemed it endless… | |
| —We did not know! | |
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| When, by mad passion goaded, | |
| We planned to hie away, | 10 |
| But, unforeboded, | |
| The storm-shafts gray | |
| So heavily down-pattered | |
| That none could forthward go, | |
| Our lives seemed shattered… | 15 |
| —We did not know! | |
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| When I found you, helpless lying, | |
| And you waived my deep misprise, | |
| And swore me, dying, | |
| In phantom-guise | 20 |
| To wing to me when grieving, | |
| And touch away my woe, | |
| We kissed, believing… | |
| —We did not know! | |
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| But though, your powers outreckoning, | 25 |
| You hold you dead and dumb, | |
| Or scorn my beckoning, | |
| And will not come; | |
| And I say, “’Twere mood ungainly | |
| To store her memory so:” | 30 |
| I say it vainly— | |
| I feel and know! | |
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