YET WILL THIS PASS, AND PASS SHALL I?

‘A Popular Personage at Home’ was one of two poems Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote about his beloved dog of 13 years, Wessex, who died in 1926, two years before Hardy himself. However, what makes ‘A Popular Personage at Home’ especially notable is that Hardy wrote the poem from the perspective of the dog, allowing ‘Wessex’ to speak for himself. It also hints at the erosion of nature itself! A beautiful poem about a dog. Love Susie. x

A Popular Personage at Home

‘I live here: “Wessex” is my name:

I am a dog known rather well:

I guard the house but how that came

To be my whim I cannot tell.

‘With a leap and a heart elate I go

At the end of an hour’s expectancy

To take a walk of a mile or so

With the folk I let live here with me.

‘Along the path, amid the grass

I sniff, and find out rarest smells

For rolling over as I pass

The open fields toward the dells.

‘No doubt I shall always cross this sill,

And turn the corner, and stand steady,

Gazing back for my Mistress till

She reaches where I have run already,

‘And that this meadow with its brook,

And bulrush, even as it appears

As I plunge by with hasty look,

Will stay the same a thousand years.’

Thus ‘Wessex.’ But a dubious ray

At times informs his steadfast eye,

Just for a trice, as though to say,

‘Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?’