Tess Durbeyfield

Nastassja Kinski as Tess

At early dawn, one moment lost in youth,

Still to become the maiden she won’t be,

How even then Tess knew in reverie

Her star was blighted.  Rendered into truth,

The ill-judged execution of the plan

Did misappropriate the finer such:

Assurance, none in time of doubt; and much

Love, if it truly were, from the wrong man. 

Where was her guardian Angel, who would come

But to ungently judge as wrong the wronged?

From Marlott she began, to Stonehenge will

She bear the last injustice from the sum.

It is as it should be, Tess thought, and longed

For death to raise her name to d’Urberville. 

Tess Durbeyfield © Ron Villejo

I loved reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the 1892 novel by Thomas Hardy, as a student at Northwestern University. Tess was as much a tragic heroine, as was Desdemona, and I found her story seeping emotionally into my poetry in those youthful years. This is a Petrarchan sonnet, and my diction is a bit stilted at times, but it still has quite a lot of sentimental value for me.