The Poetical Works Of Thomas Hardy (Annotated Edition)

 

Thomas Hardy

 

 

 

 

Contents:

 

 

Thomas Hardy – A Biographical Primer

 

Wessex Poems And Other Verses

 

The Temporary The All

Amabel

Hap

“In Vision I Roamed”

Postponement

A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

Neutral Tones

She At His Funeral

Her Initials

Her Dilemma (In --- Church)

Revulsion

She, To Him

Ditty

The Sergeant's Song

Valenciennes

San Sebastian

The Stranger's Song

The Burghers

Leipzig

The Peasant's Confession

The Alarm

Her Death And After

The Dance At The Phœnix

The Casterbridge Captains

A Sign-Seeker

My Cicely

Her Immortality

The Ivy-Wife

A Meeting With Despair

Unknowing

Friends Beyond

To Outer Nature

Thoughts Of Phena At News Of Her Death

Middle-Age Enthusiasms

In A Wood

To A Lady Offended By A Book Of The Writer's

To A Motherless Child

Nature's Questioning

The Impercipient (At A Cathedral Service)

At An Inn

The Slow Nature (An Incident Of Froom Valley)

In A Eweleaze Near Weatherbury

The Bride-Night Fire (A Wessex Tradition)

Heiress And Architect

The Two Men

“I Look Into My Glass”

 

Poems Of The Past And The Present

 

V. R. 1819–1901 - A Reverie

War Poems

Embarcation

Departure

The Colonel's Soliloquy

The Going Of The Battery

Wives' Lament

At The War Office, London

A Christmas Ghost-Story

Drummer Hodge

A Wife In London

The Souls Of The Slain

Song Of The Soldiers' Wives And Sweethearts

The Sick Battle-God

Poems Of Pilgrimage

Genoa And The Mediterranean

Shelley's Skylark

In The Old Theatre, Fiesole

Rome: On The Palatine

Rome: Building A New Street In The Ancient Quarter

Rome: The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse

Rome: At The Pyramid Of Cestius Near The Graves Of Shelley And Keats

Lausanne: In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11–12 P. M.

Zermatt To The Matterhorn

The Bridge Of Lodi

On An Invitation To The United States

Miscellaneous Poems

The Mother Mourns

“I Said To Love”

A Commonplace Day

At A Lunar Eclipse

The Lacking Sense

To Life

Doom And She

The Problem

The Subalterns

The Sleep-Worker

The Bullfinches

God-Forgotten

The Bedridden Peasant To An Unknowing God

By The Earth's Corpse

Mute Opinion

To An Unborn Pauper Child

To Flowers From Italy In Winter

On A Fine Morning

To Lizbie Browne

Song Of Hope

The Well-Beloved

Her Reproach

The Inconsistent

A Broken Appointment

“Between Us Now”

“How Great My Grief”

“I Need Not Go”

The Coquette, And After

A Spot

Long Plighted

The Widow Betrothed

At A Hasty Wedding

The Dream-Follower

His Immortality

The To-Be-Forgotten

Wives In The Sere

The Superseded

An August Midnight

The Caged Thrush Freed And Home Again (Villanelle)

Birds At Winter Nightfall

The Puzzled Game-Birds

Winter In Durnover Field

The Last Chrysanthemum

The Darkling Thrush

The Comet At Yell'ham

Mad Judy

A Wasted Illness

A Man (In Memory Of H. Of M.)

The Dame Of Athelhall

The Seasons Of Her Year

The Milkmaid

The Levelled Churchyard

The Ruined Maid

The Respectable Burgher On “The Higher Criticism”

Architectural Masks

The Tenant-For-Life

The King's Experiment

The Tree - An Old Man's Story

Her Late Husband (King's Hintock, 182*)

The Self-Unseeing

In Tenebris I

In Tenebris Ii

In Tenebris Iii

The Church-Builder

The Lost Pyx - A Mediæval Legend

Tess's Lament

The Supplanter - A Tale

Imitations, Etc.

Sapphic Fragment

Catullus: Xxxi

After Schiller

Song From Heine

From Victor Hugo

Cardinal Bembo's Epitaph On Raphael

Retrospect

“I Have Lived With Shades”

Memory And I

 

Time's Laughing Stocks And Other Verses.

 

Time's Laughingstocks

The Revisitation

A Trampwoman's Tragedy

The Two Rosalinds

A Sunday Morning Tragedy

The House Of Hospitalities

Bereft

John And Jane

The Curate's Kindness - A Workhouse Irony

The Flirt's Tragedy

The Rejected Member's Wife

The Farm-Woman's Winter

Autumn In King's Hintock Park

Shut Out That Moon

Reminiscences Of A Dancing Man

The Dead Man Walking

More Love Lyrics

1967

Her Definition

The Division

On The Departure Platform

In A Cathedral City

“I Say I'll Seek Her”

Her Father

At Waking

Four Footprints

In The Vaulted Way

In The Mind's Eye

The End Of The Episode

The Sigh

“In The Night She Came”

The Conformers

The Dawn After The Dance

The Sun On The Letter

The Night Of The Dance

Misconception

The Voice Of The Thorn

From Her In The Country

Her Confession

To An Impersonator Of Rosalind

To An Actress

The Minute Before Meeting

He Abjures Love

A Set Of Country Songs

Let Me Enjoy

At Casterbridge Fair

The Dark-Eyed Gentleman

To Carrey Clavel

The Orphaned Old Maid

The Spring Call

Julie-Jane

News For Her Mother

The Fiddler

The Husband's View

Rose-Ann

The Homecoming

Pieces Occasional And Various

A Church Romance

The Rash Bride

The Dead Quire

The Christening

A Dream Question

By The Barrows

A Wife And Another

The Roman Road

The Vampirine Fair

The Reminder

The Rambler

Night In The Old Home

After The Last Breath

In Childbed

The Pine Planters

The Dear

One We Knew

She Hears The Storm

A Wet Night

Before Life And After

New Year's Eve

God's Education

To Sincerity

Panthera

The Unborn

The Man He Killed

Geographical Knowledge

One Ralph Blossom Soliloquizes

The Noble Lady's Tale

Unrealized

Wagtail And Baby

Aberdeen

George Meredith

Yell'ham-Wood's Story

A Young Man's Epigram On Existence

 

Moments Of Vision And Miscellaneous Verses

 

Moments Of Vision

The Voice Of Things

“Why Be At Pains?”

“We Sat At The Window”

Afternoon Service At Mellstock

At The Wicket-Gate

In A Museum

Apostrophe To An Old Psalm Tune

At The Word “Farewell”

First Sight Of Her And After

The Rival

Heredity

“You Were The Sort That Men Forget”

She, I, And They

Near Lanivet, 1872

Joys Of Memory

To The Moon

Copying Architecture In An Old Minster

To Shakespeare After Three Hundred Years

Quid Hic Agis?

On A Midsummer Eve

Timing Her

Before Knowledge

The Blinded Bird

“The Wind Blew Words”

The Faded Face

The Riddle

The Duel

At Mayfair Lodgings

To My Father's Violin

The Statue Of Liberty

The Background And The Figure

The Change

Sitting On The Bridge

The Young Churchwarden

“I Travel As A Phantom Now”

Lines To A Movement In Mozart's E-Flat Symphony

“In The Seventies”

The Pedigree

His Heart - A Woman's Dream

Where They Lived

The Occultation

Life Laughs Onward

The Peace-Offering

“Something Tapped”

The Wound

A Merrymaking In Question

“I Said And Sang Her Excellence”

A January Night

A Kiss

The Announcement

The Oxen

The Tresses

The Photograph

On A Heath

An Anniversary

“By The Runic Stone”

The Pink Frock

Transformations

In Her Precincts

The Last Signal

The House Of Silence

Great Things

The Chimes

The Figure In The Scene

“Why Did I Sketch”

Conjecture

The Blow

Love The Monopolist

At Middle-Field Gate In February

The Youth Who Carried A Light

The Head Above The Fog

Overlooking The River Stour

The Musical Box

On Sturminster Foot-Bridge

Royal Sponsors

Old Furniture

A Thought In Two Moods

The Last Performance

“You On The Tower”

The Interloper

Logs On The Hearth

The Sunshade

The Ageing House

The Caged Goldfinch

At Madame Tussaud's In Victorian Years

The Ballet

The Five Students

The Wind's Prophecy

During Wind And Rain

He Prefers Her Earthly

The Dolls

Molly Gone

A Backward Spring

Looking Across

At A Seaside Town In 1869

The Glimpse

The Pedestrian - An Incident Of 1883

“Who's In The Next Room?”

At A Country Fair

The Memorial Brass: 186*

Her Love-Birds

Paying Calls

The Upper Birch-Leaves

“It Never Looks Like Summer”

Everything Comes

The Man With A Past

He Fears His Good Fortune

He Wonders About Himself

Jubilate

He Revisits His First School

“I Thought, My Heart”

Fragment

[At Last I Entered A Long Dark Gallery]

Midnight On The Great Western

Honeymoon Time At An Inn

The Robin

“I Rose And Went To Rou'tor Town”

The Nettles

In A Waiting-Room

The Clock-Winder

Old Excursions

The Masked Face

In A Whispering Gallery

The Something That Saved Him

The Enemy's Portrait

Imaginings

On The Doorstep

Signs And Tokens

Paths Of Former Time

The Clock Of The Years

At The Piano

The Shadow On The Stone

In The Garden

The Tree And The Lady

An Upbraiding

The Young Glass-Stainer

Looking At A Picture On An Anniversary

The Choirmaster's Burial

The Man Who Forgot

While Drawing In A Churchyard

“For Life I Had Never Cared Greatly”

Poems Of War And Patriotism

“Men Who March Away”

His Country

England To Germany In 1914

On The Belgian Expatriation

An Appeal To America On Behalf Of The Belgian Destitute

The Pity Of It

In Time Of Wars And Tumults

In Time Of “The Breaking Of Nations”

Cry Of The Homeless - After The Prussian Invasion Of Belgium

Before Marching And After

“Often When Warring”

Then And Now

A Call To National Service

The Dead And The Living One

A New Year's Eve In War Time

“I Met A Man”

“I Looked Up From My Writing”

Finale - The Coming Of The End

Afterwards

 

Late Lyrics And Earlier

 

Weathers

The Maid Of Keinton Mandeville (A Tribute To Sir H. Bishop)

Summer Schemes

Epeisodia

Faintheart In A Railway Train

At Moonrise And Onwards

The Garden Seat

Barthélémon At Vauxhall

“I Sometimes Think”

Jezreel - On Its Seizure By The English Under Allenby, September 1918

A Jog-Trot Pair

“The Curtains Now Are Drawn”

“According To The Mighty Working”

“I Was Not He”

The West-Of-Wessex Girl

Welcome Home

Going And Staying

Read By Moonlight

At A House In Hampstead - Sometime The Dwelling Of John Keats

A Woman's Fancy

Her Song

A Wet August

The Dissemblers

To A Lady Playing And Singing In The Morning

“A Man Was Drawing Near To Me”

The Strange House

“As 'Twere To-Night”

The Contretemps

A Gentleman's Epitaph On Himself And A Lady, Who Were Buried Together

The Old Gown

A Night In November

“Where Three Roads Joined”

“And There Was A Great Calm”

Haunting Fingers - A Phantasy In A Museum Of Musical Instruments

The Woman I Met

“If It's Ever Spring Again”

The Two Houses

On Stinsford Hill At Midnight

The Fallow Deer At The Lonely House

The Selfsame Song

The Wanderer

A Wife Comes Back

A Young Man's Exhortation

At Lulworth Cove A Century Back

A Bygone Occasion

Two Serenades

The Wedding Morning

End Of The Year 1912

The Chimes Play “Life's A Bumper!”

“I Worked No Wile To Meet You”

At The Railway Station, Upway

Side By Side

Dream Of The City Shopwoman

A Maiden's Pledge

The Child And The Sage

Mismet

An Autumn Rain-Scene

Meditations On A Holiday

An Experience

The Beauty

The Collector Cleans His Picture

The Wood Fire

Saying Good-Bye

On The Tune Called The Old-Hundred And-Fourth

The Opportunity

Evelyn G. Of Christminster

The Rift

Voices From Things Growing In A Churchyard

On The Way

“She Did Not Turn”

Growth In May

The Children And Sir Nameless

At The Royal Academy

Her Temple

A Two-Years' Idyll

By Henstridge Cross At The Year's End

Penance

“I Look In Her Face”

After The War

“If You Had Known”

The Chapel-Organist

Fetching Her

“Could I But Will”

She Revisits Alone The Church Of Her Marriage

At The Entering Of The New Year

I (Old Style)

Ii (New Style)

They Would Not Come

After A Romantic Day

The Two Wives

“I Knew A Lady”

A House With A History

A Procession Of Dead Days

He Follows Himself

The Singing Woman

Without, Not Within Her

“O I Won't Lead A Homely Life”

In The Small Hours

The Little Old Table

Vagg Hollow

The Dream Is—Which?

The Country Wedding

First Or Last

Lonely Days

“What Did It Mean?”

At The Dinner-Table

The Marble Tablet

The Master And The Leaves

Last Words To A Dumb Friend

A Drizzling Easter Morning

On One Who Lived And Died Where He Was Born

The Second Night

She Who Saw Not

The Old Workman

The Sailor's Mother

Outside The Casement - (A Reminiscence Of The War)

The Passer-By

“I Was The Midmost”

A Sound In The Night

On A Discovered Curl Of Hair

An Old Likeness

Her Apotheosis

“Sacred To The Memory”

To A Well-Named Dwelling

The Whipper-In

A Military Appointment

The Milestone By The Rabbit-Burrow

The Lament Of The Looking-Glass

Cross-Currents

The Old Neighbour And The New

The Chosen

The Inscription

The Marble-Streeted Town

A Woman Driving

A Woman's Trust

Best Times

The Casual Acquaintance

Intra Sepulchrum

The Whitewashed Wall

Just The Same

The Last Time

The Seven Times

The Sun's Last Look On The Country Girl

In A London Flat

Drawing Details In An Old Church

Rake-Hell Muses

The Colour

Murmurs In The Gloom

Epitaph

An Ancient To Ancients

After Reading Psalms Xxxix., Xl., Etc.

Surview

 

Satires Of Circumstance, Lyrics And Reveries

 

Lyrics And Reveries In Front Of The Landscape

Channel Firing

The Convergence Of The Twain

The Ghost Of The Past

After The Visit

To Meet, Or Otherwise

The Difference

The Sun On The Bookcase

“When I Set Out For Lyonnesse”

A Thunderstorm In Town

The Torn Letter

Beyond The Last Lamp

The Face At The Casement

Lost Love

“My Spirit Will Not Haunt The Mound”

Wessex Heights

In Death Divided

The Place On The Map

The Schreckhorn

A Singer Asleep

A Plaint To Man

God's Funeral

Spectres That Grieve

“Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?”

Self-Unconscious

The Discovery

Tolerance

Before And After Summer

At Day-Close In November

The Year's Awakening

Under The Waterfall

The Going

Your Last Drive

The Walk

Rain On A Grave

“I Found Her Out There”

Without Ceremony

Lament

The Haunter

The Voice

His Visitor

A Circular

A Dream Or No

After A Journey

A Death-Day Recalled

Beeny Cliff

At Castle Boterel

Places

The Phantom Horsewoman

The Spell Of The Rose

St. Launce's Revisited

Where The Picnic Was

The Wistful Lady

The Woman In The Rye

The Cheval-Glass

The Re-Enactment

Her Secret

“She Charged Me”

The Newcomer's Wife

A Conversation At Dawn

A King's Soliloquy On The Night Of His Funeral

The Coronation

Aquae Sulis

Seventy-Four And Twenty

The Elopement

“I Rose Up As My Custom Is”

A Week

Had You Wept

Bereft, She Thinks She Dreams

In The British Museum

In The Servants' Quarters

The Obliterate Tomb

“Regret Not Me”

The Recalcitrants

Starlings On The Roof

The Moon Looks In

The Sweet Hussy

The Telegram

The Moth-Signal

Seen By The Waits

The Two Soldiers

The Death Of Regret

In The Days Of Crinoline

The Roman Gravemounds

The Workbox

The Sacrilege (A Ballad-Tragedy)

The Abbey Mason

The Jubilee Of A Magazine

The Satin Shoes

Exeunt Omnes

A Poet

Satires Of Circumstance In Fifteen Glimpses

I At Tea

Ii In Church

Iii By Her Aunt's Grave

Iv In The Room Of The Bride-Elect

V At A Watering-Place

Vi In The Cemetery

Vii Outside The Window

Viii In The Study

Ix At The Altar-Rail

X In The Nuptial Chamber

Xi In The Restaurant

Xii At The Draper's

Xiii On The Death-Bed

Xiv Over The Coffin

Xv In The Moonlight

 

Human Shows,  Far Phantasies, Songs, And Trifles

 

Waiting Both

A Bird-Scene At A Rural Dwelling

“Any Little Old Song”

In A Former Resort After Many Years

A Cathedral Façade At Midnight

The Turnip-Hoer

The Carrier

Lover To Mistress

The Monument-Maker

Circus-Rider To Ringmaster

Last Week In October

Come Not; Yet Come!

The Later Autumn

“Let Me Believe”

At A Fashionable Dinner

Green Slates

An East-End Curate

At Rushy-Pond

Four In The Morning

On The Esplanade

In St. Paul's A While Ago

Coming Up Oxford Street: Evening

A Last Journey

Singing Lovers

The Month's Calendar

A Spellbound Palace

When Dead

Sine Prole

Ten Years Since

Every Artemisia

The Best She Could

The Graveyard Of Dead Creeds

“There Seemed A Strangeness”

A Night Of Questionings

Xenophanes, The Monist Of Colophon

Life And Death At Sunrise

Night-Time In Mid-Fall

A Sheep Fair

Postscript

Snow In The Suburbs

A Light Snow-Fall After Frost

Winter Night In Woodland

Ice On The Highway

Music In A Snowy Street

The Frozen Greenhouse

Two Lips

No Buyers

One Who Married Above Him

The New Toy

Queen Caroline To Her Guests

Plena Timoris

The Weary Walker

Last Love-Word

Nobody Comes

In The Street

The Last Leaf

At Wynyard's Gap

At Shag's Heath

A Second Attempt

“Freed The Fret Of Thinking”

The Absolute Explains

“So, Time”

An Inquiry

The Faithful Swallow

In Sherborne Abbey

The Pair He Saw Pass

The Mock Wife

The Fight On Durnover Moor

Last Look Round St. Martin's Fair

The Caricature

A Leader Of Fashion

Midnight On Beechen, 187*

The Aërolite

The Prospect

Genitrix Laesa

The Fading Rose

When Oats Were Reaped

Louie

“She Opened The Door”

“What's There To Tell?”

The Harbour Bridge

Vagrant's Song

Farmer Dunman's Funeral

The Sexton At Longpuddle

The Harvest-Supper

At A Pause In A Country Dance

On The Portrait Of A Woman About To Be Hanged

The Church And The Wedding

The Shiver

“Not Only I”

She Saw Him, She Said

Once At Swanage

The Flower's Tragedy

At The Aquatic Sports

A Watcher's Regret

Horses Aboard

The History Of An Hour

The Missed Train

Under High-Stoy Hill

At The Mill

Alike And Unlike

The Thing Unplanned

The Sheep-Boy

Retty's Phases

A Poor Man And A Lady

An Expostulation

To A Sea-Cliff

The Echo-Elf Answers

Cynic's Epitaph

A Beauty's Soliloquy During Her Honeymoon

Donaghadee

He Inadvertently Cures His Love-Pains

The Peace Peal

Lady Vi

A Popular Personage At Home

Inscriptions For A Peal Of Eight Bells

A Refusal

Epitaph On A Pessimist

The Protean Maiden

A Watering-Place Lady Inventoried

The Sea Fight

Paradox

The Rover Come Home

“Known Had I”

The Pat Of Butter

Bags Of Meat

The Sundial On A Wet Day

Her Haunting-Ground

A Parting-Scene

Shortening Days At The Homestead

Days To Recollect

To C. F. H.

The High-School Lawn

The Forbidden Banns

The Paphian Ball

On Martock Moor

That Moment

Premonitions

This Summer And Last

“Nothing Matters Much”

In The Evening

The Six Boards

Before My Friend Arrived

Compassion

“Why She Moved House”

Tragedian To Tragedienne

The Lady Of Forebodings

The Bird-Catcher's Boy

A Hurried Meeting

Discouragement

A Leaving

Song To An Old Burden

“Why Do I?”

 

Winter Words In Various Moods And Metres

 

The New Dawn's Business

Proud Songsters

Thoughts At Midnight

“I Am The One”

The Prophetess

A Wish For Unconsciousness

The Bad Example

To Louisa In The Lane

Love Watches A Window

The Love-Letters

An Unkindly May

Unkept Good Fridays

The Mound

Liddell And Scott

Christmastide

Reluctant Confession

Expectation And Experience

Aristodemus The Messenian

Evening Shadows

The Three Tall Men

The Lodging-House Fuchsias

The Whaler's Wife

Throwing A Tree

The War-Wife Of Catknoll

Concerning His Old Home

Her Second Husband Hears Her Story

Yuletide In A Younger World

After The Death Of A Friend

The Son's Portrait

Lying Awake

The Lady In The Furs

Childhood Among The Ferns

A Countenance

A Poet's Thought

Silences

“I Watched A Blackbird”

A Nightmare, And The Next Thing

To A Tree In London

The Felled Elm And She

He Did Not Know Me

So Various

A Self-Glamourer

The Dead Bastard

The Clasped Skeletons

In The Marquee

After The Burial

The Mongrel

Concerning Agnes

Henley Regatta

An Evening In Galilee

The Brother

We Field-Women

A Practical Woman

Squire Hooper

“A Gentleman's Second-Hand Suit”

“We Say We Shall Not Meet”

Seeing The Moon Rise

Song To Aurore

He Never Expected Much

Standing By The Mantelpiece

Boys Then And Now

That Kiss In The Dark

A Necessitarian's Epitaph

Burning The Holly

Suspense

The Second Visit

Our Old Friend Dualism

Faithful Wilson

Gallant's Song

A Philosophical Fantasy

A Question Of Marriage

The Letter's Triumph

A Forgotten Miniature

Whispered At The Church-Opening

In Weatherbury Stocks

A Placid Man's Epitaph

The New Boots

The Musing Maiden

Lorna The Second

A Daughter Returns

The Third Kissing-Gate

Drinking Song

The Tarrying Bridegroom

The Destined Pair

A Musical Incident

June Leaves And Autumn

No Bell-Ringing

“I Looked Back”

The Aged Newspaper Soliloquizes

Christmas: 1924

The Single Witness

How She Went To Ireland

Dead “Wessex” The Dog To The Household

The Woman Who Went East

Not Known

The Boy's Dream

The Gap In The White

Family Portraits

The Catching Ballet Of The Wedding Clothes

A Winsome Woman

The Ballad Of Love's Skeleton

A Private Man On Public Men

Christmas In The Elgin Room

“We Are Getting To The End”

He Resolves To Say No More

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Poetical Works Of Thomas Hardy (Annotated  Edition)

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

 

ISBN: 9783849640453

 

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

www.facebook.com/jazzybeeverlag

admin@jazzybee-verlag.de

 

 

 

 

Thomas Hardy – A Biographical Primer

 

English novelist, was born in Dorsetshire on the 2nd of June 1840. His family was one of the branches of the Dorset Hardys, formerly of influence in and near the valley of the Frome, claiming descent of John Le Hardy of Jersey (son of Clement Le Hardy, lieutenant-governor of that island in 1488), who settled in the west of England. His maternal ancestors were the Swetman, Childs or Child, and kindred families, who before and after 1635 were small landed proprietors in Melbury Osmond, Dorset, and adjoining parishes. He was educated at local schools, 1848–1854, and afterwards privately, and in 1856 was articled to Mr. John Hicks, an ecclesiastical architect of Dorchester. In 1859 he began writing verse and essays, but in 1861 was compelled to apply himself more strictly to architecture, sketching and measuring many old Dorset churches with a view to their restoration. In 1862 he went to London (which he had first visited at the age of nine) and became assistant to the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, R.A. In 1863 he won the medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for an essay on Coloured Brick and Terra-cotta Architecture, and in the same year won the prize of the Architectural Association for design. In March 1965 his first short story was published in Chamber’s Journal, and during the next two or three years he wrote a great deal of verse, being somewhat uncertain whether to take to architecture or to literature as a profession. In 1867 he left London for Weymouth, and during that and the following year wrote a “purpose” story, which in 1869 was accepted by Messrs Chapman and Hall. The manuscript had been read by Mr. George Meredith, who asked the writer to call on him, and advised him not to print it, but to try another, with more plot. The manuscript was withdrawn and re-written, but never published. In 1870 Mr. Hardy took Mr. Meredith’s advice too literally, and constructed a novel that was all plot, which was published under the title Desperate Remedies. In 1872 appeared Under the Greenwood Tree, “a rural painting of the Dutch school,” in which Mr. Hardy had already “found himself,” and which he has never surpassed in happy and delicate perfection of art. A Pair of Blue Eyes, in which tragedy and irony come into his work together, was published in 1873. In 1874 Mr. Hardy married Emma Lavinia, daughter of the late T. Attersoll Gifford of Plymouth. His first popular success was made by Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), which, on its appearance anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine, was attributed by many to George Eliot. Then came The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), described, not inaptly, as “a comedy in chapters”; The Return of the Native (1878), the most sombre and, in some ways, the most powerful and characteristic of Mr. Hardy’s novels; The Trumpet-Major (1880); A Laodicean (1881); Two on a Tower (1882), a long excursion in constructive irony; The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886); The Woodlanders (1887); Wessex Tales (1888); A Group of Noble Dames (1891); Tess of the D’ Urbervilles (1891), Mr. Hardy’s most famous novel; Life’s Little Ironies (1894); Jude the Obscure (1895), his most thoughtful and least popular book; The Well-Beloved, a reprint, with some revision, of a story originally published in the Illustrated London News in 1892 (1897); Wessex Poems, written during the previous thirty years, with illustrations by the author; and The Dynasts (2 parts, 1904–1906). In 1909 appeared Time’s Laughing-stocks and other Verses. In all his works Mr. Hardy is concerned with one thing, seen under two aspects; not civilizations, nor manners, but the principle of life itself, invisibly realized in humanity as sex, seen visibly in the world as what we call nature. He is a fatalist, perhaps rather a determinist, and he studies the workings of fate or law (ruling through inexorable moods or humours), in the chief vivifying and disturbing influence in life, women. His view of women is more French than English; it is subtle, a little cruel, not as tolerant as it seems, thoroughly a man’s point of view, and not, as with Mr. Meredith, man’s and woman’s at once. He sees all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman’s character, all that is untrustworthy in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability. He is her apologist, but always with a reserve of private judgment. No one has created more attractive women of a certain class, women whom a man would have been more likely to love or regret loving. In his earlier books he is somewhat careful over the reputation of his heroines; gradually, he allows them more liberty, with a franker treatment of instinct and its consequence. Jude the Obscure is perhaps the most unbiased consideration in English fiction of the more complicated question of sex. There is almost no passion in his work, neither the author nor his characters ever seeming to pass beyond the state of curiosity, the most intellectually interesting of limitations, under the influence of any emotion. In his feeling for nature, curiosity sometimes seems to broaden into a more intimate communion. The heath, the village with its peasants, the change of every hour among the fields and on the roads of that English countryside which he made his own—the Dorsetshire and Wiltshire “Wessex”—mean more to him, in a sense, than even the spectacle of man and woman in their blind and painful and absorbing struggle for existence. His knowledge of woman confirms him in a suspension of judgment; his knowledge of nature brings him nearer to the unchanging and consoling element in the world. All the entertainment which he gets out of life comes to him from his contemplation of the peasant, as himself a rooted part of the earth, translating the dumbness of the fields into humour. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare’s; he has the Shakesperean sense of their placid vegetation by the side of hurrying animal life, to which they act the part of chorus, with an unconscious wisdom in their close, narrow and undistracted view of things. The order of merit was conferred upon Mr. Hardy in July 1910.

 

 

WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES

 

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

 

(SAPPHICS)

 

Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellowlike, and despite divergence,
Fused us in friendship.

 

“Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome—
Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.”
So self-communed I.

 

'Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
Fair, albeit unformed to be all-eclipsing;
“Maiden meet,” held I, “till arise my forefelt
Wonder of women.”

 

Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,
Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in:
“Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I,
“Soon a more seemly.

 

“Then high handiwork will I make my life-deed,
Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,
Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.”
Thus I. . . . But lo, me!

 

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,
Bettered not has Fate or my hand's achievement;
Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track—
Never transcended!

 

AMABEL

 

I marked her ruined hues,
Her custom-straitened views,
And asked, “Can there indwell
My Amabel?”

 

I looked upon her gown,
Once rose, now earthen brown;
The change was like the knell
Of Amabel.

 

Her step's mechanic ways
Had lost the life of May's;
Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
Spoilt Amabel.

 

I mused: “Who sings the strain
I sang ere warmth did wane?
Who thinks its numbers spell
His Amabel?”—

 

Knowing that, though Love cease,
Love's race shows no decrease;
All find in dorp or dell
An Amabel.

 

—I felt that I could creep
To some housetop, and weep
That Time the tyrant fell
Ruled Amabel!

 

I said (the while I sighed
That love like ours had died),
“Fond things I'll no more tell
To Amabel,

 

“But leave her to her fate,
And fling across the gate,
‘Till the Last Trump, farewell,
O Amabel!’”

 

1865.

 

HAP

 

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

 

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

 

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

 

1866.

 

“IN VISION I ROAMED”

 

TO ---

 

In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
As though with awe at orbs of such ostént;
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

 

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
Where stars the brightest here are lost to the eye:
Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

 

And the sick grief that you were far away
Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near,
Who might have been, set on some foreign Sphere,
Less than a Want to me, as day by day
I lived unware, uncaring all that lay
Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

 

1866.

 

NATURE'S INDIFFERENCE

 

When you paced forth, to await maternity,
A dream of other offspring held my mind,
Compounded of us twain as Love designed;
Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

 

Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree,
And each thus found apart, of false desire,
A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire
As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

 

And, grieved that lives so matched should miscompose,
Each mourn the double waste; and question dare
To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows,
Why those high-purposed children never were:
What will she answer? That she does not care
If the race all such sovereign types unknows.

 

1866.

 

POSTPONEMENT

 

Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,
Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,
Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,
Wearily waiting:—

 

“I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,
But the passers eyed and twitted me,
And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he,
Cheerily mating!’

 

“Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,
In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;
But alas! her love for me waned and died.
Wearily waiting.

 

“Ah, had I been like some I see,
Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,
None had eyed and twitted me,
Cheerily mating!”

 

1866.

 

A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

 

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

 

A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
—That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain. . . .

 

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And staunchness tends to banish utterly
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

 

1866.

 

NEUTRAL TONES

 

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.

 

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . .

 

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

 

1867.

 

SHE AT HIS FUNERAL

 

They bear him to his resting-place—
In slow procession sweeping by;
I follow at a stranger's space;
His kindred they, his sweetheart I.
Unchanged my gown of garish dye,
Though sable-sad is their attire;
But they stand round with griefless eye,
Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

 

187*.

 

HER INITIALS

 

Upon a poet's page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
Whence that high singer's rapture came.
—When now I turn the leaf the same
Immortal light illumes the lay,
But from the letters of her name
The radiance has waned away!

 

1869.