Best Times

We went a day's excursion to the stream,

Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,

And I did not know

That life would show,

However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road

That wound towards the wicket of your abode,

And I did not think

That life would shrink

To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,

And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,

And I full forgot

That life might not

Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,

After a gaiety prolonged and rare,

No thought soever

That you might never

Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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