Logs on the Hearth

In Memory of a Sister

 The fire advances along the log

Of the tree we felled,

Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck

Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach

And then my foot

In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now

Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,

It was pruned, and bled -

Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,

Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim

From her chilly grave -

Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,

Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to me, and think, "Poor girl!" believing they do great justice to my memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, "Poor girl!" was a whole life to me, as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to them their world, and that in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter into another's nature truly, that's what is so grievous.” (Desperate Remedies)

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