Outside the window by Thomas Hardy, delf

Outside the window

"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

"At last I behold her soul undraped!"
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
"My God--'tis but narrowly I have escaped. -
My precious porcelain proves it delf."
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

---

Authorship

by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) , "Outside the window", from Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces, published 1914

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

by Zenobia P. Perry , "Outside the window" [choral suite: choir of young voices (SATB) and piano], from Choral Suite no. 1


delftware

The earliest delftware was a faience, a heavy, brown earthenware with opaque white glaze and polychrome decoration, made in the late 16th cent. Some of the earliest imitations of Chinese and Japanese porcelain were made at Delft in the 17th cent. Delft was important as a pottery center from the mid-17th cent. to the end of the 18th cent. By 1850 little of the industry survived. The name delft is also often applied to the wares of similar nature made in 17th-century London, Bristol, and Liverpool.

	Hap - a poem by Thomas Hardy
		If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!" Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about m