Thomas Hardy - The Woman I Met lyrics

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted    A lamp-lit crowd; And anon there pa**ed me a soul departed,    Who mutely bowed. In my far-off youthful years I had met her, Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,    Onward she slid   In a shroud that furs half-hid. “Why do you trouble me, dead woman,    Trouble me; You whom I knew when warm and human?    - How it be That you quitted earth and are yet upon it Is, to any who ponder on it,    Past being read!”   “Still, it is so,” she said. “These were my haunts in my olden sprightly    Hours of breath; Here I went tempting frail youth nightly    To their d**h; But you deemed me chaste - me, a tinselled sinner! How thought you one with pureness in her    Could pace this street   Eyeing some man to greet? “Well; your very simplicity made me love you    Mid such town dross, Till I set not Heaven itself above you,    Who grew my Cross; For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you; So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!    - What I suffered then   Would have paid for the sins of ten! “Thus went the days. I feared you despised me    To fling me a nod Each time, no more: till love chastised me    As with a rod That a fresh bland boy of no a**urance Should fire me with pa**ion beyond endurance,    While others all   I hated, and loathed their call. “I said: ‘It is his mother's spirit    Hovering around To shield him, maybe!' I used to fear it,    As still I found My beauty left no least impression, And remnants of pride withheld confession    Of my true trade   By speaking; so I delayed. “I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower    He'll be beguiled.' I held it, in pa**ing you one late hour,    To your face: you smiled, Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there A single one that rivalled me there! . . .    Well: it's all past.   I died in the Lock at last.” So walked the dead and I together    The quick among, Elbowing our kind of every feather    Slowly and long; Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there    That winter night   By flaming jets of light. She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,    Guessing their lot; She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,    And that did not. Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me, Why asked you never, ere d**h befell me,    To have my love,   Much as I dreamt thereof?” I could not answer. And she, well weeting    All in my heart, Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting    Forms apart!” Sighing and drawing her furs around her Over the shroud that tightly bound her,    With wafts as from clay   She turned and thinned away.