RPO -- Thomas Hardy : At Lulworth Cove a Century Back

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

At Lulworth Cove a Century Back

1Had I but lived a hundred years ago

2I might have gone, as I have gone this year,

3By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,

4And Time have placed his finger on me there:

5"You see that man?" -- I might have looked, and said,

6"O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought

7Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.

8So commonplace a youth calls not my thought."

9"You see that man?" -- "Why yes; I told you; yes:

10Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;

11And as the evening light scants less and less

12He looks up at a star, as many do."

13"You see that man?" -- "Nay, leave me!" then I plead,

14"I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,

15And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:

16I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!"

17"Good. That man goes to Rome -- to death, despair;

18And no one notes him now but you and I:

19A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,

20And bend with reverence where his ashes lie."

Notes

1] "NOTE. -- In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, "Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art." The spot of his landing is judged to have been Lulworth Cove." [Hardy's comment.]

3] Warmwell Cross: in Dorset, just southeast of Dorchester.

7] Saint Alban's Head: headland in Dorset at the southern end of the Isle of Purbeck, just southwest of Swanage.

14] vamp across the lea: foot it ("vamp" is a part of a shoe) across the pasture land.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1932): 570. PR 4741 F32 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1922
Publication date note: Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (London: Macmillan, 1922): 83-84. H378 L38 1922 Fisher Rare Book Library
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/13

Composition date: September 1920
Rhyme: abab

Other poems by Thomas Hardy