Thomas Hardy: The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in tonight
       Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in tonight
       As we sit and think
       By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
       Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
       Wondering, aglow,
       Fourfooted, tiptoe.


The diction and poesy of high Tennyson are changing to a more conversational and perhaps more nervous register; and in the last line a slightly jarring shift that a good Victorian would not have allowed. Hardy wasn't a good Victorian.