Nature

Drawing Details in an Old Church

by Thomas Hardy 1840–1928

From Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

Nature

I HEAR the bell-rope sawing,
And the oil-less axle grind,
As I sit alone here drawing
What some Gothic brain designed;
And I catch the toll that follows
From the lagging bell,
Ere it spreads to hills and hollows
Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,
Incurious who he be;
So, some morrow, when those knolls for
One unguessed, sound out for me,
A stranger, loitering under
In nave or choir,
May think, too, “Whose, I wonder?”
But care not to inquire.

MLA

Hardy, Thomas. “Drawing Details in an Old Church.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/hardy/512/.

Chicago

Hardy, Thomas. “Drawing Details in an Old Church.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/hardy/512/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

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