The Two Wives

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Title:     The Two Wives
Author: Thomas Hardy [More Titles by Hardy]

(SMOKER'S CLUB-STORY)

 

I waited at home all the while they were boating together -
My wife and my near neighbour's wife:
Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,
And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
With a sense that some mischief was rife.

Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
Was drowned--which of them was unknown:
And I marvelled--my friend's wife?--or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
--We learnt it was HIS had so gone.

Then I cried in unrest: "He is free! But no good is releasing
To him as it would be to me!"
"--But it is," said the woman I loved, quietly.
"How?" I asked her. "--Because he has long loved me too without
ceasing,
And it's just the same thing, don't you see."

 

-THE END-
Thomas Hardy's poem: The Two Wives

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