Wessex Poems and Other Verses/Unknowing

by Thomas Hardy

UNKNOWING

WHEN, soul in soul reflected,
We breathed an æthered air,
When we neglected
All things elsewhere,
And left the friendly friendless
To keep our love aglow,
We deemed it endless ...
—We did not know!

When, by mad passion goaded,
We planned to hie away,

But, unforeboded,
The storm-shafts gray
So heavily down-pattered
That none could forthward go,
Our lives seemed shattered ...
—We did not know!

When I found you, helpless lying,
And you waived my deep misprise,
And swore me, dying,
In phantom-guise
To wing to me when grieving,
And touch away my woe,
We kissed, believing ...
—We did not know!

But though, your powers outreckoning,
You hold you dead and dumb,
Or scorn my beckoning,
And will not come;
And I say, “'Twere mood ungainly
To store her memory so:"
I say it vainly—
I feel and know!