The Poetry Corner

The Rift (Song: Minor Mode)

By Thomas Hardy

'Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time, When yellow begins to show in the leaf, That your old gamut changed its chime From those true tones of span so brief! - That met my beats of joy, of grief, As rhyme meets rhyme. So sank I from my high sublime! We faced but chancewise after that, And never I knew or guessed my crime. . . Yes; 'twas the date or nigh thereat - Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat And cobweb-time.