No Grass

No grass there is, nor any low green thing Where the heavens and earth seem to pass away, Leaves are healed trees as yet unfurling To bey beneath the fold’s wear and limit— Hikō as you sit, are you feeling at bay? Women speak and cut through wings of being as they sing.

But already all is but yet become, and thus The mind sings of harping, those leaves not their bloom, And that the fruits are undone, as if a gust sank!

Play, play before the hearth of cinders!

• Thomas Hardy