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Text
Part 2 Former Beauties
English source:
Thomas Hardy
These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
And courted here?
Are these the muslined pink young things to whom
We vowed and swore
In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,
Or Budmouth shore?
Do they remember those gay tunes we trod
Clasped on the green;
Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod
A satin sheen?
They must forget, forget! They cannot know
What once they were,
Or memory would transfigure them, and show
Them always fair.
And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
And courted here?
Are these the muslined pink young things to whom
We vowed and swore
In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,
Or Budmouth shore?
Do they remember those gay tunes we trod
Clasped on the green;
Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod
A satin sheen?
They must forget, forget! They cannot know
What once they were,
Or memory would transfigure them, and show
Them always fair.
Composer
Gerald Finzi
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. He is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres.
Poet
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly…