The
Dead Man Walking
by Thomas Hardy
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They hail me as one living, |
But don’t they know |
That I have died of late years, |
Untombed although ?
|
I am but a shape that stands here, |
A pulseless mould, |
A pale past picture, screening |
Ashes gone cold.
|
Not at a minute’s warning, |
Not in a loud hour, |
For me ceased Time’s enchantments |
In hall and bower.
|
There was no tragic transit, |
No catch of breath, |
When silent seasons inched me |
On to this death. . . .
|
―A Troubadour-youth I rambled |
With Life for lyre, |
The beats of being raging |
In me like fire.
|
But when I practiced eyeing |
The goal of men, |
It iced me, and I perished |
A little then.
|
When passed my friend, my kinsfolk, |
Through the Last Door, |
And left me standing bleakly, |
I died yet more ;
|
And when my Love’s heart kindled |
In hate of me, |
Wherefore I knew not, died I |
One more degree.
|
And if when I died fully |
I cannot say, |
And changed into the corpse-thing |
I am today,
|
Yet is it that, though whiling |
The time somehow |
In walking, talking, smiling, |
I live not now.
|
Thomas Hardy
| Classic Poems |
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[ Afterwards ] [ At Castle Boterel ] [ The Darkling Thrush ] [ On the Departure Platform ] [ The Robin ] [ The Dead Man Walking ] |