Rain on a Grave

By Thomas Hardy 1840–1928 Thomas Hardy

Clouds spout upon her

Their waters amain

In ruthless disdain, –

Her who but lately

Had shivered with pain

As at touch of dishonour

If there had lit on her

So coldly, so straightly

Such arrows of rain:

One who to shelter

Her delicate head

Would quicken and quicken

Each tentative tread

If drops chanced to pelt her

That summertime spills

In dust-paven rills

When thunder-clouds thicken

And birds close their bills.

Would that I lay there

And she were housed here!

Or better, together

Were folded away there

Exposed to one weather

We both, – who would stray there

When sunny the day there,

Or evening was clear

At the prime of the year.

Soon will be growing

Green blades from her mound,

And daisies be showing

Like stars on the ground,

Till she form part of them –

Ay – the sweet heart of them,

Loved beyond measure

With a child’s pleasure

All her life’s round.

Biography

One of the most renowned poets and novelists in English literary history, Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the English village of Higher Bockhampton in the county of Dorset. He died in 1928 at Max Gate, a house he built for himself and his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, in Dorchester, a few miles from his birthplace. Hardy’s youth was influenced by the musicality of his father, a stonemason and fiddler, and his mother, Jemima . . .

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