Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


WHY BE AT PAINS? (WOOER'S SONG) by THOMAS HARDY

Poet Analysis

First Line: WHY BE AT PAINS THAT I SHOULD KNOW
Last Line: I PLOUGH THE UNKNOWN.
Subject(s): COURTSHIP;

WHY be at pains that I should know
You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track
To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?
I am alone,
You would enrich me more than lands
By being my own.
Yet, though this facile moment flies,
Close is your tone,
And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries
I plough the unknown.



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