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One of Thomas Hardy's best poems. I tried to keep the words '100% TH', but 'When the present has latched its postern' defied musicification - I render the line here as 'when the present has latched the old tradesman's door'. Sorry, had to be done.

lyrics

When the Present has latched its postern [the old tradesman's door]
behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when,
like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness,
mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last,
they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance
is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"

credits

from Neutral Tones : Song Settings of the Poetry of Thomas Hardy, released February 9, 2020
Gordon Thompson - piano, vocals | Mark Hughes - piano fixes

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Gordon Thompson Melbourne, Australia

Gordon lives in Melbourne and is the publisher at Clouds of Magellan Press, and publisher of 'Bent Street: Australian LGBTIQA+ Arts, Writing & Ideas'. He has four children (at last count) with Petrina, also one dog (Shep) and 6 goldfish (Papa Jo and the Sylvesters) ... more

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