| Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898. |
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| 7. A Confession to a Friend in Trouble |
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| YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less | |
| Here, far away, than when I tarried near; | |
| I even smile old smiles—with listlessness— | |
| Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere. | |
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| A thought too strange to house within my brain | 5 |
| Haunting its outer precincts I discern: | |
| —That I will not show zeal again to learn | |
| Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain…. | |
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| It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer | |
| That shapes its lawless figure on the main, | 10 |
| And each new impulse tends to make outflee | |
| The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here; | |
| Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be | |
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!
1866. | |
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