The Five Students

by Thomas Hardy

    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.