The Phantom Horsewoman

By Thomas Hardy 1840–1928 Thomas Hardy

Queer are the ways of a man I know:

He comes and stands

In a careworn craze,

And looks at the sands

And the seaward haze

With moveless hands

And face and gaze,

Then turns to go...

And what does he see when he gazes so?

They say he sees as an instant thing

More clear than to-day,

A sweet soft scene

That once was in play

By that briny green;

Yes, notes alway

Warm, real, and keen,

What his back years bring—

A phantom of his own figuring.

III

Of this vision of his they might say more:

Not only there

Does he see this sight,

But everywhere

In his brain–day, night,

As if on the air

It were drawn rose bright–

Yea, far from that shore

Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,

He withers daily,

Time touches her not,

But she still rides gaily

In his rapt thought

On that shagged and shaly

Atlantic spot,

And as when first eyed

Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

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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