Thomas Hardy — Logs On The Hearth A Memory Of A Sister

   The fire advances along the log         Of the tree we felled, Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck    Till its last hour of bearing knelled.    The fork that first my hand would reach         And then my foot In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now    Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.    Where the bark chars is where, one year,         It was pruned, and bled - Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,    Its growings all have stagnated.    My fellow-climber rises dim         From her chilly grave - Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,    Laughing, her young brown hand awave. December 1915.