How unexpected [are] the attacks of destiny! - Thomas Hardy

And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.

On a Fine Morning”
in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)

WHENCE comes Solace? — Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

This do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its iris-hued embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?