THOMAS Hardy muses on his ignorance of future love and the comfort that that ignorance denied him.
The poem may bring to mind the opening of John Donne's The Good-Morrow ('I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I /Did, till we loved?').
BEFORE KNOWLEDGE
When I walked roseless tracks and wide,
Ere dawned your date for meeting me,
O why did you not cry Halloo
Across the stretch between, and say:
'We move, while years as yet divide,
On closing lines which - though it be
You know me not nor I know you -
Will intersect and join some day!'
Then well I had borne
Each scraping thorn;
But the winters froze,
And grew no rose;
No bridge bestrode
The gap at all;
No shape you showed,
And I heard no call!
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