Former Beauties

(At Casterbridge Fair)

These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,

And tissues sere,

Are they the ones we loved in years agone,

And courted here?

Are these the muslined pink young things to whom

We vowed and swore

In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,

Or Budmouth shore?

Do they remember those gay tunes we trod

Clasped on the green;

Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod

A satin sheen?

They must forget, forget! They cannot know

What once they were,

Or memory would transfigure them, and show

Them always fair.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel's.” - (Far from the Madding Crowd)

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