The Last Performance

A poem by Thomas Hardy

"I am playing my oldest tunes," declared she,
"All the old tunes I know, -
Those I learnt ever so long ago."
- Why she should think just then she'd play them
Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall
Notes continued to pour
As when I had left two hours before:
It's the very last time," she said in closing;
"From now I play no more."

A few morns onward found her fading,
And, as her life outflew,
I thought of her playing her tunes right through;
And I felt she had known of what was coming,
And wondered how she knew.

1912.