Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses/"If You had known"

by Thomas Hardy

"IF YOU HAD KNOWN"

IF you had known
When listening with her to the far-down moan
Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,
And rain came on that did not hinder talk,
Or damp your flashing facile gaiety
In turning home, despite the slow wet walk
By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;
⁠If you had known

⁠You would lay roses,
Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses
Its graying shape upon the luxuriant green;
Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,
What might have moved you?—yea, had you foreseen

That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone where
The dawn of every day is as the close is,
⁠You would lay roses!

⁠1920.