A November Poem

I love Thomas Hardy's novels, and have a more complicated relationship with his poetry - but there are several of his poems I can't help being fond of. This is one of them, and if you could hear the rain dripping from the trees outside my windows at the moment, you would be haunted by it too.


The Division

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
With blasts that besom the green,
And I am here, and you are there,
And a hundred miles between.

O were it but the weather, dear,
O were it but the miles
That summed up all our severance,
There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
Which nothing cleaves or clears,
Is more than distance, dear, or rain,
And longer than the years.