Thomas Hardy - The Rift lyrics

'Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time, When yellow begins to show in the leaf, That your old gamut changed its chime From those true tones - of span so brief! - That met my beats of joy, of grief,   As rhyme meets rhyme. So sank I from my high sublime! We faced but chancewise after that, And never I knew or guessed my crime. . . Yes; ‘twas the date - or nigh thereat - Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat   And cobweb-time.