Wimborne Minster
"Remembering mine the loss is, not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill, . . .
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?"
—Thomas Hardy, "She, to Him"
Let’s say I’m Tom Hardy
Come to Wimborne today
To tup a fair young ewe.
I think she’ll have me too,
Knowing I’m good that way.
Come hell, or high water,
She surely loves to play,
My randy todger’s prey!
In that next century but one,
Don’t you wish you were me, old son?
My novels will make me famous—
More yet than that famous Seamus!
And poetry and love that's free
Have here got equal rights in me.
Vide Matthew Bevis, "I prefer my mare,"
review of Thomas Hardy: Selected Writings, ed. Ralph Pite (Oxford); Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems, ed. David Bromwich (Yale); and Mark Ford, Woman Much Missed: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy and Poetry (Oxford). London Review of Books, October 2024, 46, no. 19, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/matthew-bevis/i-prefer-my-mare.
October 10, 2024
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