The Voice of Things 

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago,

    When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,

The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

    In the sway of an all-including joy 

        Without cloy. 

Blankly I walked there a double decade after, 

    When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,

And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter 

    At the lot of men, and all the vapoury 

        Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

    Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now - like a congregation there 

    Who murmur the Confession - I outside, 

        Prayer denied. 

Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses