"The Voice of Things" by Thomas Hardy

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 22, 2017   The Voice of Things   Thomas Hardy

Forty years—aye, and several more—ago,       When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza'd like a multitude below,        In the sway of an all-including joy               Without cloy.   Blankly I walked there a double decade after,       When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter       At the lot of men, and all the vapoury               Things that be.   Wheeling change has set me again standing where       Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide; But they supplicate now—like a congregation there       Who murmur the Confession—I outside,               Prayer denied.            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   "The Voice of Things" was published in Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (Macmillan, 1917).   Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset, England, in 1840. His books include Poems of the Past and the Present (Harper & Bros., 1902) and Satires of Circumstance (Macmillan, 1914). Hardy died in 1928. Poetry by Hardy   The Complete Poems (Palgrave Macmillan; 2001) "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" by Wilfred Owen "To An Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman "Thursday" by Edna St. Vincent Millay Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038