At the word "farewell"

She looked like a bird from a cloud

            On the clammy lawn,

Moving along, bare-browed

            In the dim of dawn.

The candles alight in the room

            For my parting meal

Made all things withoutdoors loom

           Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,

        And it seemed to me then

As of chances the chance furthermost

         I should see her again.

I beheld not where all was so fleet

        That a Plan of the past

Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet

Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive

        To a drame at all,

Or foreshadow what fortune might weave

        From beginnings so small;

But I rose as if quicked by a spur

        I was bound to obe,

And stepped through the casement to her

        Still alone in the gray.

"I am leaving you . . . Farewell!"  I said

        As I followed her on

By an alley bare boughs overspread;

        "I soon must be gone!"

Even then the scale might have been turned

        Against love by a feather,

- but crimson one cheek of hers burned

        When we came in together.

Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses