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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  She Hears the Storm

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

She Hears the Storm

By Thomas Hardy

THERE was a time in former years—

While my roof-tree was his—

When I should have been distressed by fears

At such a night as this.

I should have murmured anxiously,

“The pricking rain strikes cold;

His road is bare of hedge or tree,

And he is getting old.”

But now the fitful chimney-roar,

The drone of Thorncombe trees,

The Froom in flood upon the moor,

The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d,

The thuds upon the thatch,

The eaves-drops on the window flicked,

The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,

I scarcely heed or mind;

He has won that storm-tight roof of hers

Which Earth grants all her kind.