A Trampwoman’s Tragedy Thomas Hardy

I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,
                 The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
                 We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
                 We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
                 We jaunted on, -
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
                 And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
                 The inn that beamed thereby.

III

For months we had padded side by side,
                 Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
                 And where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
                 I and my fancy-man.