A SELECTION OF THOMAS HARDY'S POEMS
Domicilium
(his first ever poem,
written about the age of 16, about his home and
birthplace, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset)
Wessex Poems and other Verses
Wessex heights
Her
initials
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses:
Moments of
vision
The voice of
things
Why be at pains?
We sat at the window
(Poem for St Swithin's day, on holiday with Emma)
Afternoon service in Mellstock (nostalgic
reminiscences of Stinsford Church, Dorset - "Mellstock"
in the books)
At the wicket gate
In a
museum
Apostrophe
to an old hymn tune
At the
word "farewell"
First
sight of her and after
The Rival
Heredity
You were
the sort that men forget
The oxen
(Christmas nostalgia)
The last signal (With the death of
William Barnes, Hardy was the only remaining link between
Dorset agricultural ways and the world of letters)
Overlooking
the River Stour
Old furniture
During wind and rain
Satires of Circumstance
Lyrics and Revelries
Lyrics and Revelries
In front of the
Landscape
Channel firing (remarkably prescient,
given the date...) Good example of God as a "character"
in Hardy.
The Convergence of the twain
The Ghost of the past
Satires of Circumstance
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 At the deathbed
XIV Over the coffin
XV In the moonlight
Satires of Circumstance
- Poems of 1912-13
The going
Your last drive
The walk
Rain on a grave
I found her out there
Without ceremony
Lament
The haunter
The voice (more yearnings for his
early meetings with his first wife, once she was dead of
course)
His visitor
A
circular
A dream or no (about the place where
he met his first wife)
After a journey
A death-day recalled
Beeny Cliff (more about his first
wife after her death - no wonder his second wife got so
annoyed about it)
At Castle Boterel (reminiscences of his
first wife and when they met - you wouldn't believe this if you read a
biography...)
Places
The phantom horsewoman
The spell of the rose
St Launce's revisited
Where the picnic was
Time's Laughingstocks
A
Church Romance (Romanticised account of his parents' meeting;
Hardy family legend had it that Thomas Sr. actually seduced the future Mrs
Hardy under a bush...)
The Dead Quire (our old friends from Melstock again..
The man he killed
The Roman road
The
Dynasts (Gutenberg Text)
A confession to a friend in
trouble
A conversation at dawn
A king's soliloquy (1910 - about the death
of Edward VII)
A meeting with despair
A plaint to man
A poet
A sign-seeker
A singer asleep
A thunderstorm in town
A week
After the visit (about his second wife,
for once)
Afterwards (more depression about
death)
Ah, are you digging on my grave? (some more death depression, but at
least funny...)
Amabel (after a meeting with a woman he
lusted after as a child, about twenty years later when
she was 50 and he 25-ish...
An August Midnight (probably been at the
cider when he wrote this...)
Aquae Sulis (or Bath to the rest of
us)
At an inn
At a bridal
At day-close in November
Before and after Summer
Bereft, she thinks she dreams
Beyond the last lamp
A Christmas ghost story (Christmas Eve, 1899 -
he was accused of being unpatriotic, of course)
Ditty (a poem about his first wife,
just after he met her, rather than after she was dead...)
Drummer Hodge
Exeunt omnes (more death)
Friends beyond (later parodied by
Betjeman, in "Dorset" (from Continual Dew,
1937, or Collected Poems)
God's funeral
Had you wept
Hap
He resolves to say no more
Heiress and architect
Her death and after
Her dilemma
Her immortality
Her secret
I rose up, as my custom is
In a eweleaze near Weatherbury (Weatherbury is
Puddletown (Piddletown before Queen Victoria visited),
Dorset)
In a wood
In death divided
In the British Musem (Acts 17 will tell you
what it's all about)
In
the days of crinoline
In the servants' quarters
In time of "Breaking of the
nations" (Inspired by a very dull,
pastoral scene; a month after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian
war. The poem itself was written rather later)
In vision I roamed
Leipzig
Lines
Lost love
Men who march away
Middle-age enthusiasms
My Cicely
My spirit will not haunt the mound
Nature's questioning
Neutral tones
Postponement
Regret not me
San Sebastien
Seen by the waits
Self-unconcious
Seventy-four and twenty
She (at his funeral)
She charged me
She,
to him - 1
She,
to him - 2
She,
to him - 3
She,
to him - 4
Shut out that moon
Snow in the suburbs
So time
Spectres that grieve
The abbey mason
The
alarm (Hardy
was obsessed with Napoleon and his effect on Dorset)
The burghers
The Casterbridge Captains
The cheval-glass
The
coronation
The dance at the Phoenix
The darkling thrush (note Hardy's opinion
about when the century ended - ref. 1999-2000)
The death of regret
The difference
The discovery
The
elopment
The face at the casement (about a former rival for
his first wife)
The fire at Tranter Sweatley's
The impercipient (Typical Hardy dilemma -
he'd love to believe, but can't)
The ivy-wife
The jubilee of a magazine
The moon looks in
The moth signal
The newcomer's wife
The obliterate tomb
The peasant's confession (Hardy was obsessed with Napoleon, and the Napoleonic wars, visiting Waterloo
twice)
The place on the map
The recalcitrants
The re-enactment
The respectable burgher (a good satire on the
idiocy of liberal "Christianity")
The Roman gravemounds (upset his wife (again...)
- "the little white cat was my only friend")
The
sacrilege
The satin shoes
The Shreckhorn (dedicated to the father
of Virgina Woolf - although Hardy knew him through
publishing)
The
self-unseeing
The sergeant's song
The slow nature (an incident of
the Froom valley)
The starlings on the roof
The stranger's song (the stranger having been
asked what his trade is...)
The sun in the bookcase
The
sweet hussy
The telegram
The
temporary the all
The torn letter
The two men
The two soldiers
The voice of things (Mourning for a faith he can't
have)
The wistful lady
The woman in the rye
The workbox
The year's awakening
Thoughts
of Ph---a , on her death (after the death of his cousin,
Tryphena Sparks - he may well have had an affair with
Phena when he was about 30, and she about 20; some have
speculated (wrongly) that they had an
illegitimate child) . Of course, any attractive woman
Hardy knew was idealized as long as she was either
unobtainable, or dead, or both...)
To a lady (offended by a book of
the writer's)
To an orphan child
To meet, or otherwise
To outer nature
Tolerance
Under the waterfall
Unknowing
Valenciennes
We field women (cf - Tess of the D'Urbervilles)
Wessex heights
When I set out for Lyonesse (about meeting his first
wife - happy, for once)