Dear @Jackie-Richard, I hope you’re ok, you might not see this message as you said you’re leaving this site but on the chance you ever decide to log in again, I wanted you to know that I read a lot of your messages, and it made me sad that you decided to leave - I never got the chance to speak to you, but you sound like a wonderful person and I am so sorry you lost your beloved Richard. I hope you managed to find another place where you are able to cope with your grief and are not suffering alone.
Anyway, I was looking for a place to post a poem by my favourite poet, Thomas Hardy, which he wrote about his beloved wife Emma Gifford, after she died, and found your post on poetry, which gave me an excuse to say hello to you too in case you should ever decide to log on to this site again. All the best.
At Castle Boterel
by Thomas Hardy
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, ―
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story ? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order ;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is—that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.