At Lulworth Cove a Century Back

HAD I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

'You see that man?' -- I might have looked and said,
'O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down channel round Saint Alban's Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.'

'You see that man?' -- 'Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do.'

'You see that man?' -- 'Nay, leave me!' then I plead,
'I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the thrid time; yes, that man I see!'

'Good. That man goes to Rome -- to death, dispair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.'

September 1920

Source: Hardy, Thomas. The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy. Edited by James Gibson. London: Macmillan, 1976. p. 602.