Two Serenades

Thomas Hardy * Track #35 On Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

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Album Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

ALBUM

Thomas Hardy

1922

Two Serenades by Thomas Hardy

Performed by

Thomas Hardy

Two Serenades Annotated

I - On Christmas Eve

Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone,
Outside a house, on the pavement-stone,
I sang to her, as we’d sung together
On former eves ere I felt her tether. -
Above the door of green by me
Was she, her casement seen by me;
&nbsp But she would not heed
&nbsp What I melodied
&nbsp In my soul’s sore need -
&nbsp She would not heed.

Cassiopeia overhead,
And the Seven of the Wain, heard what I said
As I bent me there, and voiced, and fingered
Upon the strings. . . . Long, long I lingered:
Only the curtains hid from her
One whom caprice had bid from her;
&nbsp But she did not come,
&nbsp And my heart grew numb
&nbsp And dull my strum;
&nbsp She did not come.

II - A Year Later

I skimmed the strings; I sang quite low;
I hoped she would not come or know
That the house next door was the one now dittied,
Not hers, as when I had played unpitied;
- Next door, where dwelt a heart fresh stirred,
My new Love, of good will to me,
Unlike my old Love chill to me,
Who had not cared for my notes when heard:
&nbsp Yet that old Love came
&nbsp To the other’s name
&nbsp As hers were the claim;
&nbsp Yea, the old Love came

My viol sank mute, my tongue stood still,
I tried to sing on, but vain my will:
I prayed she would guess of the later, and leave me;
She stayed, as though, were she slain by the smart,
She would bear love’s burn for a newer heart.
The tense-drawn moment wrought to bereave me
Of voice, and I turned in a dumb despair
At her finding I’d come to another there.
&nbsp Sick I withdrew
&nbsp At love’s grim hue
&nbsp Ere my last Love knew;
&nbsp Sick I withdrew.

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