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"I said and sang her excellence"

(Fickle Lover's Song)

I said and sang her excellence:
   They called it laud undue.
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
Yet what was homage far above
The plain deserts of my olden Love
   Proved verity of my new.
"She moves a sylph in picture-land,
   Where nothing frosts the air:"
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
"To all winged pipers overhead
She is known by shape and song," I said,
   Conscious of licence there.
I sang of her in a dim old hall
   Dream-built too fancifully,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,
   Where stood the very She.
Strange, startling, was it then to learn
   I had glanced down unborn time,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
And prophesied, whereby I knew
That which the years had planned to do
   In warranty of my rhyme.

Literature Network » Thomas Hardy » Moments of Vision » "I said and sang her excellence"