At Castle Boterel
Thomas Hardy
1840 to 1928
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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Saw us alight.
Myself and a girlish form benighted
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
And I shall traverse old love's domain
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
Of the transitory in Earth's long order;
To ease the sturdy pony's load
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
Is – that we two passed.
In dry March weather. We climb the road
I look back at it amid the rain
When he sighed and slowed.
I look behind at the fading byway,
The substance now, one phantom figure
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
March 1913
Matters not much, nor to what it led, –
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
A time of such quality, since or before,
Distinctly yet
And much have they faced there, first and last,
But what they record in colour and cast
Never again.
And feeling fled.
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border,
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour,
In that hill's story? To one mind never,
By thousands more.
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
Something that life will not be balked of