A Parting Scene

The two pale women cried,

But the man seemed to suffer more,

Which he strove hard to hide,

They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,

Till startled by the entering engine-roar,

As if they could not bear to have unfurled

Their misery to the eyes of all the world.

A soldier and his young wife

Were the couple; his mother the third,

Who had seen the seams of life.

He was sailing for the East I later heard.

They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;

Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears

"Too long; too long!" burst out. ('Twas for five years,)

A quote by Thomas Hardy 

“A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests, unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every average man and woman.”

-o0o-