Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses/The Rift

by Thomas Hardy

THE RIFT

(Song: Minor Mode)

'TWAS just at gnat and cobweb-time,
When yellow begins to show in the leaf,
That your old gamut changed its chime
From those true tones—of span so brief!—
That met my beats of joy, of grief,
⁠As rhyme meets rhyme.

So sank I from my high sublime!
We faced but chancewise after that,
And never I knew or guessed my crime. . . .
Yes; 'twas the date—or nigh thereat—
Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat
⁠And cobweb-time.