Friday, August 28, 2020

if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst

 --- Thomas Hardy, in In Tenebris - II.

The fourth and final stanza

Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by the clash of the First,
Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst,
Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom and fear,
Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here. 

For just this poem, pulled from the compendium given above, see here.