The Five Students 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.