Thomas Hardy — The Five Students

   The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,      The sun grows passionate-eyed,  And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;      As strenuously we stride, - Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,         All beating by.    The air is shaken, the high-road hot,      Shadowless swoons the day,  The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not      We on our urgent way, - Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,         But one—elsewhere.    Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,      And forward still we press  Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,      As in the spring hours—yes, Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,         But—fallen one more.    The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in      At night-time noiselessly,  The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,      And yet on the beat are we, - Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go         The track we know.    Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,      The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,  The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,      Yet I still stalk the course, - One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:         The rest—anon.