Selected Poems

by Thomas Hardy, Robert Mezey (Editor)

A selection of the writer's greatest nature poetry, selected by Tom Paulin, published in a beautiful new edition by Faber.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom . . .

-The Darkling Thrush

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, Fiction, British Literature, 19th Century, Victorian

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[John Mauro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy is known as one of the foremost English novelists of the 19th century. Hardy published his final novel, Jude the Obscure, in 1895, and then decided to focus on his passion for poetry, becoming a well-renowned poet in the early 20th century.

Hardy published over 900 poems, most with a dark, lyrical quality. His poetry covers a wide variety of styles and topics, but two of the most common themes are love and death. I am especially fond of his poems that have an ironic, humorous edge to them.

My favorite is "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?", which takes a dialogue form and serves as a great example of Hardy's dark humor:

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? — planting rue?"
— "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave,
My nearest dearest kin?"
— "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

"But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy? — prodding sly?"
— "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say — since I have not guessed!"
— "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog , who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave…
Why flashed it not to me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting place."

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of course, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is best known for his prose work, with superb novels such as The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. I did not know that he also had an extensive poetic oeuvre. This booklet contains a selection. Compiler Tom Paulin makes it clear that his poetic work was just as important to Hardy, especially in the second half of his life. It shows: the most appealing poems date from after 1900. They are rather of a nostalgic and elegiac nature, often musing about the inexorability of Time, or yearning for a lost loved one. In any case, they testify to a formal mastery of metrics and imagination. Paulin also makes it clear that also Hardy’s prose work had a clear poetic flavour. I am going to read his masterpieces with different eyes now. As an example of this formal mastery, the poem "Regret not me", published in 1914:

Regret not me;
Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

I did not know
That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

I skipped at morn
Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

I ran at eves
Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, "I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves."

Now soon will come
The apple, pear, and plum
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

Again you will fare
To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

Yet gaily sing
Until the pewter ring
Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.

And lightly dance
Some triple-timed romance
In coupled figures, and forget mischance;

And mourn not me
Beneath the yellowing tree;
For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 the ash, and were
gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago ;
And 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.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I have read several of his novels, this is the first time I have read Thomas Hardy's poetry and, as it does in all of its collections, Dover has gathered a selection from throughout his writing career. What struck me throughout my reading was the almost ever-present sadness. There were some poems that escaped into blissful enjoyment of nature or love, but it seemed that the majority were caught up in loss of life or love or health. As I said in one of my updates, and reaffirm on finishing reading, there is much sadness in the poems --both personal and related to war time loss. Also, some very poignant writing. I am looking forward to reading his biography as I wonder how many of the very personal-appearing poems may be autobiographical (if any).

While there is much sorrow in Hardy's poetry, there is also beauty, the joy of nature, the intensity of tangled emotions and relationships. This is a very nice introduction. Dover does its usual consistent good work here. I definitely would recommend this book to anyone wishing to dip into the poetic works of Hardy. There are some 69 poems, taken from collections written between 1898 and 1917.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Michael Lindgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning, life-altering revelation. I had been aware since my undergraduate days of Hardy's second career as a poet -- one of the strangest in the history of English letters -- and the nearly fanatical devotion he engendered among readers of a certain stripe, without ever having made the effort to penetrate the mystery of his verse. The wait has been richly rewarded. As many other critics have noted, Hardy wrote some of the weirdest verse imaginable; Robert Mezey, in his cheerleader-ly introduction, quotes Donald Davie's assessment that in the face of Hardy's verse "one honest critic after another has by his own confession retired, baffled and defeated." Its quality seems wildly uneven; along lyrics of stunning penetration stand passages that A. E. Housman would have rejected as corny. Its often jarring rhythms and unpredictable meter make it seem at times almost proto-modernist, while the insistence on archaic and rural language have the purity and strangeness of some bizarre lost pre-Middle English folk poet; the Gawain poet as imagined by John Clare and written by Hopkins, perhaps? Truly there is no comparison. The sadness, the effortless expression of the profoundest metaphysical questions in the simplest, most natural language, the force of his poetic imagination... this is work that defies description, in the most positive of ways. In a personal sense, a reading experience like this stands as a re-affirmation of the beautiful endlessness of poetry.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection. Definitely found some new favorites!

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 4 out of 5]

SELECTED POEMS
(Dover Edition)
Written by Thomas Hardy
2015, 103 Pages
Genre: poetry, classics

(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY in exchange for an honest review.)

★★★★

I really enjoyed this collection of Thomas Hardy's poetry. I like that while it has great imagery it is easy to understand (or at least I think it is). One of my favourite poems is HER INITIALS. I just love the words used in it.

k (My Novelesque Life)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy is a poet I always go back to. Perhaps known more for his novels, his poetry ranks among the best in the English language. I recommend his shorter poems and I would say that for experiencing the craft of rhyme, meter, and poetical form, he is a pleasure.

Thomas Hardy is not just an author you read and then move on to something else. He is a poet for a lifetime.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread. Love his poetry

[Nicole Johns · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know a little too much about Thomas Hardy, thanks to a college seminar on his life and work. It's my humble opinion that some of Hardy's poetry is genius, like Neutral Tones. Much of his poetry is heavy with regret, memory, bleakness, mourning, and lots of other profound emotions. There are some happier poems, but don't read Hardy for a pep talk on love or human nature.

I am particularly drawn to his poetry about war (what my senior paper was all about), and recommend you read "Poems of War and Patriotism" in Moments of Vision, "The Man He Killed", and "Channel Firing" among many others. Hardy was an old man by the time World War I was raging and he was tired of man's self destruction.

So take some time and sit with Mr. Hardy. If you've loved and lost, then he's the man for you.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVE 💗 THOMAS HARDY.
MRS THOMAS HARDY
BRENDA A MCKINLEY HARDY
THOMAS AND BRENDA HARDY

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleased to be able to read 'Selected Poems' by Thomas Hardy (edited by Robert Mezey). I was aware that he had written poems but I don't think I'd had the chance to read any.

Hardy wrote more than 900 poems, which seem like a pretty overwhelming place to start, so this is a good selection since there are sixty-nine presented here from a variety of time over his career from 1898 to 1917. These are solid poems and probably not the sort of collection that should be read straight through. There are themes of war and love and loss. Lots of loss. Hardy has at least one poem in this collection written after his wife died. There are themes that recur, but that doesn't make the collection feel tedious or repetitious. The curation is good, and there are footnotes scattered along the way to help illuminate passages or historical data.

I was glad to get a chance to read this collection and I emjoyed the poems presented.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to Hardy's poetry through singing Britten's song cycle 'Winter Words'. I was drawn to his language--richly metaphorical but not the kind of bombardment of the senses you often get in more recent poetry. There's a sort of thoughtful pacing that makes you, as it were, fall into step with the words, and follow where they lead you. And usually that is somewhere unexpected and tragic.

So I came for the language and stayed for the pathos. I knew full well going in that, where other writers tend to show a light at the end of the tunnel, Hardy usually just leaves you in the dark. And this is true to some extent: at least from what I have read in this collection, Hardy is most interested by loss and lament, especially the burning loss of love experienced when you are young, and the more throbbing loss of companionship when you are old (his narrators seem to me most often to be in their 20s or in their 60s, perhaps looking back on their younger self). There is a terribly tragic lament for a cat (Last Words to a Dumb Friend).

But having said this, often there is a hopefulness, which (as far as I can tell) seems to be found in the natural world and in, if not dogmatic religion, then a sort of questioning spirituality (a realm 'beyond'). Re the former, an extract from one of my favourite poems from the collection, The Darkling Thrush:

'...An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew l
And I was unaware.'

Re the latter, 'When Dead: To ------':

'It will be much better when
I am under the bough;
I shall be more myself, Dear, then,
Than I am now.

No sign of querulousness
To wear you out
Shall I show there: strivings and stress
Be quite without.

This fleeting life-brief blight
Will I have gone past
When I resume my old and right
Place in the Vast.

And when you come to me
To show you true,
Doubt not I shall infallibly
Be waiting for you.'

Well, anyway. He's a rather wonderful craftsman of poetry, and as a singer it is hard not to notice his musicality. Many are clearly meant to be songs, given titles like 'Ballad', with strong recurring metre and refrains, and one is even instructed '1st and 3rd verse major key, 2nd verse minor key'. It's not surprising, then, that Hardy is one of the most musically-set poets in the English language.

It's a sad journey at times, but I am happy I undertook it.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hardy's poetry marks one of the key transitions between the 19th and 20th centuries. Typically written in fairly conventional metrical patterns, more often than not rhymed, it's simultaneously unrooted from both Victorian and Romantic sensibilities. Hardy's a kind of experiential existentialist, profoundly alienated from metaphysical comforts, but doggedly determined not to give into the despair lurking about a quarter inch beneath his melancholy. He consciously embraced raggedness (if you're judging in Tennysonian terms) as a reflection of thought and emotion, but his best poems, most notably "The Convergence of the Twain" and "The Darkling Thrush," are often those that arrive as a formal clarity.

[David Sterritt]

It’s an ever-surprising fact that Thomas Hardy thought of himself more as a poet than as a novelist, but as great as many of his novels are, I’ve always had tremendous respect for his poetry, and reading through Robert Mezey’s wide-ranging selection reconfirms his excellence for me. I often find the earlier works more moving and insightful than some of the later ones, but there are superb works in every period, and Mezey’s conversational, opinionated notes are another fine asset in the volume. Highly recommended.

[Tiana :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing poetry only wish we had time to look at more in college

[Toby Warnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ringy dingy

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Modern Poetry our professor taught poems by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), including Channel Firing In The Time of 'The Breaking of Nations," and Neutral Tones. They were not poems I forgot, and I have forgot most of what we read that semester.

Many know Hardy's novels because of the films based on them. Hardy was unable to publish his poems until his novels brought fame and financial security. He wrote 900 poems over his lifetime and 14 novels.

The poems in the Dover Thrift edition include selections from Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Time's Laughingstock and other Verses (1909), Satires of Circumstance (1919), and Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917.)

You don't turn to Hardy for happy love poems. He recalls the losses and divisions, not the lyric joys and bliss of love.

The Voice is one of my favorites. "Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me/Saying that now you are not as you were/When you had changed from the one who was all to me/But as at first, when our day was fair." Hardy wrote this after the death of his estranged first wife in amends for his later treatment of her.

Neutral Tones was taught in my Modern Poetry class. It is atmospheric and concise, with sympathetic nature reflecting the inner desolation of a man who reads betrayal in the smile of his beloved.

There are poems which tell a story.

The Burghers (17--) concerns a man discovering his wife with her lover. He raises a knife but seeing his wife's love for the other man he stays his hand, considering his choice of righteous vengeance or mercy.

In Her Death and After a man is called to the death bed of the woman he loves but who married another. She has given birth to a lame child and wishes it had been theirs. Time passes and the husband remarries and has more children. The narrator watches helplessly as the lame child is pushed aside, unloved. He spins a lie and claims the child is his own.

Most memorable and disturbing are Hardy's war poems. We meet the the war dead in throngs and as individuals. The Boer War and WWI were waged during his lifetime. You won't find war glorified in these poems.

In Drummer Hodge a young lad dies in the Boer War and is buried under "strange stars."

The Souls of the Slain come home to England's coast to "feast on our fame", only to be told that their loved ones do not think of their sacrifice but hold dear to memories of 'old homely acts'.

In The Man He Killed a soldier muses over the irony that the foe he killed in battle he would have treated to a a drink had they met in a bar.

The poem that has haunted me is San Sebastian (August 1813) With Thoughts of Sergeant M-- (Pensioner), Who died 186- . Two men met on the Ivel Way. One remarks on seeing the other's daughter. The father responds by telling about the girl he "wronged in Peninsular days," when out of the trenches the soldiers stormed San Sebastian for five hours. Victorious, the men ransacked the city where he came upon a girl and raped her.
She raised her beseeching eyes to me
And I heard the words of prayer she sent
In her own soft language...
Fatefully I copied those eyes for my punishment
In begetting the girl you see!
The father finishes by saying,
So, to-day I stand with a God-set brand
Like Cain's, when he wandered from kindred's ken...
I served through the war that made Europe free;
I wived me in peach-year. But, hid from men,
I bear that mark on me.
Researching and reading about San Sebastian brought understanding of the horror behind Hardy's poem. The British siege of San Sebastian took place during the Napoleonic war when Spain was ruled by Napoleon's brother Joseph. The town was well defended and the British and Portuguese suffered heavy losses before finally breaching the wall and taking the town. After weeks of war and carnage the soldiers, victory finally won, they found wine and became a drunk mob. They burned the town, killed up to 1,000 citizens, and raped the women.

According to one first hand account, "From every quarter we heard the cries of distress of women who were being raped, without regard either to their tender you or to their respective age; wives outraged under the eyes of their husbands, girls dishonored in the presence of their parents...Other crimes more horrible yet were committed on this day, and it's only a sense of 'modesty' which prevents us naming them."

And of this dehumanizing massacre Hardy explores how men live with what they have done. It is a powerful poem, relevant to all eras.

These are not poems you read in great gulps. I spent several weeks reading this volume and have not read all the poems yet.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I haven't actually finished this book, one is never really done with a book of poetry. This is a decent collection with all the "Poems of 1912-1913" from "Satires of Circumstance" included.

Hardy as a poet is very different from Hardy as a novelist, the way most of us know him. His poems are almost invariably short, some are beautifully ambiguous, others as direct and clear as lightning across the night sky, a few are playful ("The Ruined Maid"). A few are famous, like "Channel Firing" and "The Darkling Thrush".

Hardy's novels were written for serial publication so they tend to be padded with extraneous sub-plots and minor characters who don't do much--it was simply the way novels had to be written then, first to run in monthly installments in one of the "better" magazines, then as three volume works for the lending libraries which accounted for a significant part of sales. In his verse, though, we see that Hardy could make every word count. He wrote like both an artist and a craftsman.

Some of the same themes run through the novels and the poems--the unavoidable and often malignant role of fate or chance in the lives of people; the beauties and terrors of rural working class life; the realization that once one turns away from what is most important his life will become meaningless, something Hardy called "the tragedy of the moment".

He might have been ironic (although I don't think so) when he did a calculation on the proofs of "Human Shows" and found that only about two-fifths of them were "poems of tragedy, sorrow or grimness". Hardy saw tragedy as part of everyday life, not somethng that affected only noble or dramatic lives.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy the author of such classic novels as The Return of the Native and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was also a great poet. His lyricism, subtlety, depth, and variety have earned him a significant place in the ranks of modern English poets.

Not a critique of Hardy as much as the book itself. Hardy's poetry is easily recognized as "classical" poetry. There is a lyrical quality that took me back to English literature class in college. However, the reading is easier without a professor raging on about rhyme scheme or fertility symbolism. It is enjoyable poetry that can be appreciated by all readers.

As a collection, Dover Publications does what it excels at doing. It brings the reader a fine collection of poetry in an easy to handle size. At eighty pages, this collection is intimidating in itself and being a collection of poetry can be picked up and read and put down again. There is not the need or feeling to read it all in one sitting. In fact, it is better to take your time and enjoy at your leisure.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hardy, Robinson Jeffers and Robert Frost all have a kind of shared secret thesis informing all their work: Whether or not there's a God to reward a good life, it's certainly better to live a good life. Hardy hits this in a way that is wistful without being sloppy. He's a genial sad soul, and you get that in the poems in a way that you don't from the moral hysterics of some of the novels. (Jude! Tess! Hey, I'm talking to you, Eustacia Vie! Just calm down, everybody!)
As for the poems themselves: it's not quite that if you've read "The Oxen," "The Darkling Thrush," and "The Convergence of the Twain" you've read everything, but well, most seem to be sort of variations on those themes. Which again is not to say that he's either bad or uninteresting.

"And some day hence, toward Paradise
And all its blest-- if such should be--
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
Though it contain no place for me."

[Abrahamus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy is fairly unique in English literature for having achieved the rare status of being more-or-less equally lauded as both a novelist and as a poet. Born in 1840 in southern England (in Dorset – or Wessex, as he preferred to call it, helping to repopularize the medieval designation for the region), he was trained as an architect, but was already flirting with an alternate career as a novelist around the time of his marriage to Emma Gifford in 1870. After a couple of false starts, he won both commercial and critical success with such novels as Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and The Woodlanders (1887). After his last two novels Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895) caused him considerable trouble with both critics and publishers, Hardy determined to give up novel writing and return to his early love of poetry, publishing his first of several volumes of poetic works in 1898. By the latter years of his life (he died in 1928) Hardy was regarded as the premiere English literary figure of his time.

Despite having considered a career as a clergyman early in life, by the time he reached mature adulthood Hardy seems to have arrived at a settled if uneasy agnosticism – uneasy in the sense that much of his work, both prose and poetry, reveals a deep longing for a belief in the transcendent and supernatural, but one to which he ultimately cannot seem to bring himself. His marriage to Emma also soured after a few initially happy years (the couple were unable to conceive children), and unhappy marriages (all too common in Victorian and Edwardian England) form another major theme throughout Hardy’s work. (Emma died suddenly in 1912, and several of Hardy’s poems thereafter seem to express deep regret and even a newfound love and affection for her memory – feelings which he seems, for whatever reason, to have been unable to summon up during most of their life together. Hardy did remarry in 1914 to Florence Dugdale, a woman more than 40 years his junior.) One other noteworthy feature of Hardy’s work is his capturing (with characteristic Realism as opposed to nostalgic Romanticism) of the traditions, folklore, and attitudes which once marked village life in rural England – virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages but rapidly disappearing within Hardy’s own lifetime.

This set of selections comprises 180 poems out of the 950 which Hardy published in total. The very best of these (the half dozen or so that are to be found in any decent poetic compendium) are certainly among the very best in the English language. These would include:

The Darkling Thrush
The Man He Killed
Channel Firing
The Oxen
The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the Loss of The Titanic)
In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”

Others with which I was not previously familiar but was especially delighted to discover include:

Domicilium
Rome: At the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats
Zermatt: To the Matterhorn
“Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?”
The Sundial on a Wet Day

And still others which I think are quite good (some of them continue to grow on me upon subsequent re-reading and reflection):

Hap
Neutral Tones
Nature’s Questioning
“I Look Into My Glass”
Before and After Summer
At Day-Close in November
Rain on a Grave
The Photograph
An Anniversary
Transformations
Logs on the Hearth
He Prefers Her Earthly
A Backward Spring
In the Garden
Going and Staying
In the Small Hours
The Dream Is—Which?
An Ancient to Ancients
Retty’s Phases
Shortening Days at the Homestead
Proud Songsters

Beyond these, I have to admit forthrightly that Hardy’s pessimism does become quite a drag: so many poems about chronically unhappy people, miserable marriages, etc., that the weight of the despair becomes nearly intolerable after a while. (Hardy steadfastly denied that he was really a pessimist, asserting himself to be instead a “meliorist.”) Another problem I find with many is that they are too thematically esoteric (centered around certain quite specific details of his experiences with Emma, for instance) to have much broad or universal appeal. His consummate craftsmanship, ability to turn a choice and memorable phrase, and inventiveness (he frequently dug up arcane, obscure, dialectic, or half-invented words to suit his purposes) saves, or nearly saves, a number even of these, however.

Apart from The Return of the Native, which I partially and half-heartedly read in high school, I have not delved into any of Hardy’s novels, but I do intend to. I can recommend a couple of excellent film adaptations of The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d’Urbervilles .

Editor Robert Mezey’s Introduction and Notes are very helpful for gaining a deeper appreciation both of Hardy’s skill and of the biographical details which shaped his poems (especially with regard to the more obscure ones) and should be read by anyone seeking more than a very cursory understanding. (He scores extra points for referencing, of all people, country music artist Randy Travis in the Introduction!)

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked to have seen more from Satires of Circumstance.

Not the cheeriest of souls, was he...?

[Nique 💫 chroniqled ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I just don’t get it lol

[Sophie Nguyen]

finally! someone who get it. (the “it” in question being depression, generational anxiety, and pessimism)

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

From reading his poetry, it's obvious that Hardy’s outlook on life seems grim. Most, if not all, of his poems contain images that suggest gray, dark, and neutral color schemes, and language that conveys pessimism and uncertainty. Hardy himself was said to be agnostic, perhaps even atheistic. Since Hardy’s works were written in a time where there were many different beliefs as to the origin of humanity and life, a recurring theme that can be found in most of the poems is the idea of humanity’s struggle against fate, and the eventual futility of that struggle against fate, the forces of nature, and the universe itself. In his essay “Thomas Hardy and the Poetry of the Absurd,” Charles May touches on the attitude of much of Hardy’s poetry, relating it to that of Albert Camus’ idea of the awareness of the ‘absurd.’ May posits that a work of the absurd is “a manifestation of the artist who realizes that he cannot explain, and must be content only to describe, the unreasonable universe” (May 66). Hardy does not react to the universe in the way that one normally would, instead “rejecting comforting beliefs and insisting on facing an empty world” (May 64).

Hardy realizes that the thought of death without the hope of transcendence releases man to explore his own freedom, and that to live a fulfilling life, man must learn to live without this hope (May 64-5). However, in a separate essay titled “Thomas Hardy: The Poet in Search of His Voice,” Bert Hornback asserts that “Hardy insisted to the very end of his life that he was a meliorist, not a pessimist,” and that the present pessimism was merely a disguise, that “Hardy is afraid of speaking his secret, subjective responses to and feelings for life; so he invents voices who look down at the world from godly afars and speak wryly of us and our troubles” (Hornback 56). The lingering feeling from a great number of Hardy’s poems is a sense that humanity is something that must be endured, but that it is something that one comes to accept and live with, however unhappily. If one chooses to believe the idea that Hardy hid his personal feelings behind pessimism and a mask of doubt, Hardy provides not only his own commentary on the changing ideals and beliefs of the time, but his outlook on life and humanity as well, which is perhaps not as bleak as it would seem.

Hardy’s work seems to contain elements from both the realist and the modernist movements, and because of this, it is somewhat difficult to classify his works, but most critics agree on placing him with the Modernists. On one hand, his pessimism and bleak outlook on daily life mirrors Realist tradition. However, Hardy’s later poetry was published during the time of the Modernists, and reflects the acceptance of scientific values over religious ones (and with this a loss of faith), and assimilation of other, older traditions into the new one to form new ideas.

One poem that seems to walk this border between Realist and Modernist is “Nature’s Questioning.” In this piece, a speaker muses that the world around him, including flocks of sheep and trees, is staring at him “[l]ike chastened children sitting silent in a school” (4), as he contemplates the meaning of life. These items look like at one point they may have had “early zest” (8), for life, but now are worn down from life’s continuum; thus the landscape looks “dulled [and] constrained” (5) to him, and seems to wonder at its own meaning (12). The world poses four possibilities for existence: “some Vast Imbecility” (13) created them and then forgot to tend this creation, an “Automaton” (17) created them and was unaware that they required guidance, a dying god created and then left them, and the fact that they may be part of a yet-unknown higher plan. The speaker acknowledges all of these, but says they are “[n]o answerer” (25), and does not wish to pose their own answer, opting “for the wisdom of experience instead” (Hornback 58). Whatever the case may actually be makes no difference in the life of both the observer/speaker and the landscape; “the winds, and rains, / [a]nd Earth’s old glooms and pains” will continue as usual and give little thought to the meaning of life, only the experiences within it.

According to May, “attempts to rationalize the human dilemma of pain and isolation are futile” (May 68), but it does not seem that simple. Through this poem, Hardy does put forth his own beliefs of the meaning of life— even though he poses four different possibilities, the refusal to choose one suggests that he feels it may not matter what the answer is. There may or may not even be an answer, but Hardy knows that life will continue with or without that answer, and that “Life and Death are neighbors nigh” (28). In terms of the form of the poem, the stanzas are set up in quatrains, which parallel the four answers posed to the question of life’s meaning. The ABBA rhyme scheme for each stanza echoes the feeling of being trapped without an answer, doomed to repeat oneself until the end. All this being said, this viewpoint is not necessarily a strictly pessimistic view of the world, merely one that seems to be indifferent to whatever the answer may be, which would have made many in the Victorian era uncomfortable.

In addition to holding what society at the time might have called ‘abnormal’ religious beliefs, Hardy exhibited anti-war sentiments in his poetry which were mostly still unseen at this time, specifically in the piece “Drummer Hodge,” originally titled “The Dead Drummer” in 1899. The war depicted in this poem is meant to be the Boer War, in which the British Empire fought two Boer states in South Africa for control of the area. The British were the victors, but obviously many lives were lost in the process, with the subject of this poem supposedly one of them. This poem describes the burial of a drummer boy after his time at war, who couldn’t have been very old, implied by the fact that “Young Hodge” was “[f]resh from his Wessex home” (7-8). This burial is very unceremonial, as they just “throw” the boy’s body into a pit “to rest / [u]ncoffined” (1-2). Presumably the military would have told this boy how important to the cause his job was, but he is buried so hastily, and without any honors, as if his death was just something that was unavoidable and necessary. Hardy uses foreign words, such as “kopje-crest” (which is a little rocky hill), “veldt” (a flat grassland) and even going as far as to describe the “foreign constellations” (3-5) above his tomb each night to show readers that this boy was buried far from home. The use of foreign words adds to the reader’s sympathy for the boy in an unknown land alone, and how he must have felt during his time serving for the British army in a foreign place. A young boy would certainly see the appeal in traveling to a new country, but for a purpose such as war, the newness is all but lost in the task.

Even though this boy may have been just a drummer boy for the British army in another country, the poem contains a slight tone of honor and dismay. Hardy seems to be trying to convey that immortalizing this boy, and in effect other deceased soldiers, in a poem will do more for his and other soldiers’ memories than an unmarked grave on an African plain. This poem has a rhyme scheme of ABABA across all three stanzas, mimicking the sound of a drum beat. Each line alternates 8 and 6 syllables, and all of the lines are iambic, adding another layer of mimicked drum beat, but also adding mimicked heartbeat, suggesting that Hodge will live on through this poem.

Despite his sentiments that indicate pessimism and negativity, some of Hardy’s poems seem to end on a more hopeful note, such as “The Sleep-Worker.” This poem almost takes the form of a lament, combined with an ode. The speaker is patiently waiting for one they call “Mother” (1) to awaken and see what has happened while they slumbered. While this being has slept, “[f]air growths [and] foul cankers” have arisen, and “right [has become] enmeshed with wrong” (6), and the speaker ponders how the being will react to these. Because there is both right and wrong present, and based on Hardy’s tendency to provide social commentary, one can infer that Hardy is addressing Mother Nature or Mother Earth, a being that would have the power to ‘work’ (or maintain seamless natural processes) while they were ‘asleep’ or dormant, as well as both “destroy, in one wild shock of shame” (12), and “patiently adjust, amend, and heal” (14).

This poem displays Hardy’s belief in some higher power in control, regardless of whether humans can appease that power or not, in addition to his apprehension and eagerness to present the workings of humans. Like May’s assertion of the ‘absurd’ ideal, Hardy does not try to explain the universe or a higher power, only to present the image of one who could be (and most likely is) himself and describe the choices this “Mother” being has.

In the last stanza, Hardy has chosen to speak about destruction first, then end the poem with an image of healing and repair, and therefore hope, leaving a pleasant taste in readers’ mouths as opposed to a bitter one. As this poem has the makings of a sonnet, and as most sonnets deal with love in some way, there is a tinge of concern for one’s fellow man to the speaker’s tone. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABBA ABBA CDC EED. In the last stanza, the words that constitute this rhyme are “shame,” “frame,” and “heal.” The last stanza’s rhyme scheme deviates from what one would normally expect it to be— “heal” in this stanza rhymes with “feel” from the penultimate stanza, and this return to something gentle and pleasant instead of harsh and destruction-centered furthers the feeling of hope from the tone.

A final example of Hardy’s shift towards positive emotions instead of mainly pessimism, as well as one of Hardy’s most well-known poems, is “The Darkling Thrush.” The premise of this poem is simple— the speaker, leaning on a fence post, notes how dreary and dismal everything is, including the trees and the weather, but as soon as he hears a thrush sing, he gets a feeling of hope. Every image up until line 17 is dark and cheerless, being set in “[w]inter’s dregs” (3), at the turn of the century. Being written on December 31st of 1900, even the century itself passes monotonously, “[t]he land’s sharp features” (9) echoing the “[c]entury’s corpse” (10), with the gray cloud cover acting as a “crypt” (11) and the wind as a “death lament” (12).

The volta of the poem, which is very obvious in this case as opposed to some of Hardy’s other poems, comes “[a]t once” (17) with the thrush’s song. The speaker, who had been “fervourless” up until this point, is thrilled by the fact that, even though the thrush is “frail, gaunt, and small” (21), he has decided to “fling his soul / upon the growing gloom” (23-4) ecstatically, despite the landscape and the attitudes of those around him recommending otherwise. In the thrush’s song, the speaker hears “[s]ome blessed Hope” (31) of which they were “unaware” (32), which can be interpreted as an unforeseen glimmer of optimism for the upcoming century.

Hardy’s use of the image of the “broken lyre” (6) is an interesting choice. Lyres are generally associated with poets and the idea of a muse, but because this one is broken, it could represent Hardy’s personal lack of motivation or inspiration to write poetry, and hearing the thrush sing restores that drive. Additionally, Hardy could be using ‘lyres’ as a play on words for the ‘liars’ and corruption of the past century. The thrush’s song of hope could therefore denote an end to such corruption, or perhaps the bird sings in spite of this corruption. Furthermore, this poem has a normal rhyme scheme with nothing too intricate, but the meter of the lines is iambic with an alternating pattern of eight and six syllables. This gives the poem a certain beat or flow, which emulates the thrush's song. Hornback maintains that Hardy hid his intentions and feelings behind pessimistic language, but in this piece, the reader can plainly see that Hardy is not hiding anything. The speaker, and in effect the author, is thrilled to have heard the thrush’s song, and senses the hope that this song brings with it.

May believes that “Hardy’s rebellion against the chaos of the universe is a demand for order, [...] [but he also] realizes the impossibility of finding it” (May 73). Hornbeck, on the other hand, feels that because Hardy claimed to be a meliorist, the pessimist tones and dark attitudes are just a mask to hide his more sentimental feelings, those that Hardy may have deemed too 'human' to show in a poem with such lofty goals as his. Not every poem requires hiding behind that mask, such as “The Darkling Thrush,” but in attempting to hide his true intent in the poems that necessitate it, his real feelings show through anyway. Hardy’s poetry, therefore, is not an assertion of order, as he is not trying to create it— it is Hardy’s main method for creating awareness of the disorderly nature of the universe, and for finding some way to make life in a chaotic world within an equally chaotic time period worth living.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get past the late 17th century, and writers whose work is equally esteemed in two or more forms diminishes noticeably. Shakespeare and Jonson were poets and playwrights, but although Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote plays, they are read, studied, and remembered solely as novelists. Hardy, in this respect, is a comparative rarity: equally prolific as a writer of fiction and of verse—and equally brilliant at both. I've enjoyed Hardy's novels since my youth, but only recently have I come to read and appreciate his poetry: too late, but certainly better late than never.

The overwhelming impression of this substantial selection of his verse is of variety, especially of form: reading the hundreds of poems here, you'd think that Hardy never repeated a form. There are, of course, reiterations and reworkings of content, and because David Wright organized his selection (silently) by theme, there does seem to be a certain sameness in the first ten or twenty pages (and indeed in the last ten or twenty), but beyond that it soon becomes clear that Hardy wrote about everything, almost always with beautiful clarity. Not every poem demands to be read twice, but virtually all reward a second look: you don't need to wrestle with Hardy's verse, but neither does it simply wash over you. I find him beautifully balanced between evocative and direct. Many of the poems stand alone, but I suspect that knowledge of Hardy's biography would help to illuminate many of the poems about this relationships.

As this is a selection for the reader not the student, the majority of the poems here come without annotation, although the notes increase towards the end of the book, and many of them are variations on "The woman referred to is probably Tryphena Sparks/Emma Gifford". Some poems are dated and some not; most are independent lyrics, although Wright does include all of the Poems of 1912-13, written after the death of Emma Gifford (and painful reading, although they must have been even more so for Florence Dugdale), as well as some extracts from The Dynasts.

Hereby, Hardy takes his place with Shakespeare, Donne, Larkin, and Hughes as my favourite poets—and I'll choose "The Oxen", "Proud Songsters", "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'", "We Sat at the Window", "A Countenance", and "When I Set Out for Lyonesse" as six favourites here.

[Alexander Donnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike Carl Sandburg, whose selected poems I read over a couple of months to get a proper feel for him, I already knew Thomas Hardy as a novelist. In fact, we had to study Hardy the poet in school, and I have to admit, "Neutral Tones" and "The Ruined Maid" still hold up as some of his best work.

I’m now officially obsessed with Hardy as a poet. He’s as good at this as he is at writing novels, which is saying something because he’s a cracking novelist. Proper glad I took my time with this—felt like I got loads out of it, both personally and creatively. His reputation as "The Great Pessimist" is well and truly earned, and honestly, that’s part of the charm for me—he’s just so gloriously miserable! Absolute precursor to Emo, I don’t care what anyone says.

Now, I don´t have a problem with rhymed poetry—love it, in fact, and reckon it’s fallen out of fashion a bit these days. But even I have to admit, over hundreds of poems, the constant rhyming can get a bit much. That said, I remember Frank Skinner saying something along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing here), "If you’ve written about 30 good poems, you can call yourself a proper poet." Well, if that’s the case, Hardy smashes it—I personally marked up 46 that I reckon are worth going back to. These stood out especially:

"An August Midnight" – Clever little conceit, that.

"The Moth-Signal" – YES.

"I Travel as a Phantom Now" – YES.

"Weathers" – Love the structure!

"Epitaph" – Blew me away.

"The Thing Unplanned" – Odd rhyme scheme, but it works.

"The Sundial on a Wet Day" – Quality.

Hardy’s poetry mixes lyrical elegance with a bleak view of life, and it sticks with you. If his novels show fate being a right bastard, his poetry strips it down to the raw emotion behind it all. This collection just confirmed what I suspected—Hardy’s poetry deserves just as much love as his fiction. Brilliant, if a bit relentless.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poetry to Thomas Hardy is a perfect compliment to his work. Despite the difference in form, one feels the same atmosphere in the language and emotion of these poems. It confirmed for me that Hardy is one of the most striking and recognisable voices in the English language, and a voice that defines the post-war era. Yet he’s not frozen in time. In Hardian lyricism I always sense the earnest, almost ridiculous romanticism of Robert Smith, as if For Elise or Pictures of You are Gothic 80s descendants of Thomas Hardy’s end of the century darkness. His nature poetry, a thing of quiet wonder, you can hear the soul that would be resurrected in John McFarlane 100 years later. There is something of the ordinary in the way Hardy writes of the sublime and the beauty, something so much more accessible than the words of those established as the greatest poets of all. Whether landscape, love or war, there is something ghostly in this collection, something that calls to the hidden layers of the world. At times, Hardy is almost too transparent, too simple and certainly there is a monotone to these poems that is not unusual to his novels - if you don’t like Hardy his work must be monotonous, dull and a bit pathetic. If you do, there is plenty here to enjoy - musings on mortality a plenty like “Heredity”, snapshots of nature’s beauty as in “Four in the Morning” or “Snow in The Suburbs”, tragic tales of tale and desire like “The Ruined Maid”, creatures brought magically arrive in MaFarlane fashion (“The Darkling Thrush”), lyrics of timeless mysticism such as “When I Set Out For Lyonnesse”, love songs (“We Sat At the Window”), deathly odes (“Rain on a Grave” - imagine a three minute Cure intro before you read it) and memories of war like the evocative “Channel Firing”. Personally, a writer of singular passion and soul whose work evokes an age and an eternity.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this collection is long overdue for me. Hardy is one of my favourite novelists, and while I've encountered (and loved) most of his more famous poems in one anthology or another, this is my first experience of reading a broader selection of his poetry.

Interestingly, I find that I like his early efforts in this medium better than his later ones. The first third of this collection is utterly gorgeous: these poems are lyrical, poignant, nostalgic, and shot through with exactly the kind of vivid imagery of rural English life that makes his novels so compelling to me. Works like “I Look into My Glass” and “Drummer Hodge” are particularly haunting and lovely; I certainly plan to re-read many of these in the future.

The remainder of the collection is also very good, but somehow lacks the magic of the opening sections. Nevertheless, it was nothing short of a joy to revisit many familiar Hardy poems; I can now confidently count him among my favourite poets as well as among my favourite novelists. Fellow readers: get you a writer who can do both.