Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses/The Rift

by Thomas Hardy

THE RIFT

(Song: Minor Mode)

'TWAS just at gnat and cobweb-time,
When yellow begins to show in the leaf,
That your old gamut changed its chime
From those true tones—of span so brief!—
That met my beats of joy, of grief,
As rhyme meets rhyme.

So sank I from my high sublime!
We faced but chancewise after that,
And never I knew or guessed my crime. . . .
Yes; 'twas the date—or nigh thereat—
Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat
And cobweb-time.