The Sunshade

Ah - it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade,

Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink,

Merely a naked sheaf of wires! -

Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers

Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade,

No more a screen from the weakest ray;

Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes,

Nothing but rusty bones as it lies

In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade

Up and down this seaside place? -

Little thumb standing against its stem,

Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem,

Softening yet more the already soft face!

Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade

A skeleton just as her property is,

Laid in the chink that none may scan?

And does she regret - if regret dust can -

The vain things thought when she flourished this?

A quote from a Hardy novel

“When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand- she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

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