The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди

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      The Flirt’s Tragedy

       Table of Contents

      (17–)

      Here alone by the logs in my chamber,

       Deserted, decrepit—

       Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot

       Of friends I once knew—

      My drama and hers begins weirdly

       Its dumb re-enactment,

       Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing

       In spectral review.

      —Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her—

       The pride of the lowland—

       Embowered in Tintinhull Valley

       By laurel and yew;

      And love lit my soul, notwithstanding

       My features’ ill favour,

       Too obvious beside her perfections

       Of line and of hue.

      But it pleased her to play on my passion,

       And whet me to pleadings

       That won from her mirthful negations

       And scornings undue.

      Then I fled her disdains and derisions

       To cities of pleasure,

       And made me the crony of idlers

       In every purlieu.

      Of those who lent ear to my story,

       A needy Adonis

       Gave hint how to grizzle her garden

       From roses to rue,

      Could his price but be paid for so purging

       My scorner of scornings:

       Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me

       Germed inly and grew.

      I clothed him in sumptuous apparel,

       Consigned to him coursers,

       Meet equipage, liveried attendants

       In full retinue.

      So dowered, with letters of credit

       He wayfared to England,

       And spied out the manor she goddessed,

       And handy thereto,

      Set to hire him a tenantless mansion

       As coign-stone of vantage

       For testing what gross adulation

       Of beauty could do.

      He laboured through mornings and evens,

       On new moons and sabbaths,

       By wiles to enmesh her attention

       In park, path, and pew;

      And having afar played upon her,

       Advanced his lines nearer,

       And boldly outleaping conventions,

       Bent briskly to woo.

      His gay godlike face, his rare seeming

       Anon worked to win her,

       And later, at noontides and night-tides

       They held rendezvous.

      His tarriance full spent, he departed

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