Thomas Hardy - A Wife and Another lyrics

  "War ends, and he's returning    Early; yea,   The evening next to-morrow's!" -    —This I say To her, whom I suspiciously survey,   Holding my husband's letter    To her view. -   She glanced at it but lightly,    And I knew That one from him that day had reached her too.   There was no time for scruple;    Secretly   I filched her missive, conned it,    Learnt that he Would lodge with her ere he came home to me.   To reach the port before her,    And, unscanned,   There wait to intercept them    Soon I planned: That, in her stead, I might before him stand.   So purposed, so effected;    At the inn   Assigned, I found her hidden:-    O that sin Should bear what she bore when I entered in!   Her heavy lids grew laden    With despairs,   Her lips made soundless movements    Unawares, While I peered at the chamber hired as theirs.   And as beside its doorway,    Deadly hued,   One inside, one withoutside    We two stood, He came—my husband—as she knew he would.   No pleasurable triumph    Was that sight!   The ghastly disappointment    Broke them quite. What love was theirs, to move them with such might!   "Madam, forgive me!" said she,    Sorrow bent,   "A child—I soon shall bear him . . .    Yes—I meant To tell you—that he won me ere he went."   Then, as it were, within me    Something snapped,   As if my soul had largened:    Conscience-capped, I saw myself the snarer—them the trapped.   "My hate dies, and I promise,    Grace-beguiled,"   I said, "to care for you, be    Reconciled; And cherish, and take interest in the child."   Without more words I pressed him    Through the door   Within which she stood, powerless    To say more, And closed it on them, and downstairward bore.   "He joins his wife—my sister,"    I, below,   Remarked in going—lightly -    Even as though All had come right, and we had arranged it so . . .   As I, my road retracing,    Left them free,   The night alone embracing    Childless me, I held I had not stirred God wrothfully.