Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1899)
by Thomas Hardy
3664289Wessex Poems and Other Verses1899Thomas Hardy

Wessex Poems

and Other Verses

By

THOMAS HARDY

Author of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" etc.

With
30 Illustrations by the Author

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1899

BY THE SAME AUTHOR


Desperate Remedies.
Two on a Tower.
The Woodlanders.
Far from the Madding Crowd.
Wessex Tales.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Jude the Obscure.

The Hand of Ethelberta.
A Pair of Blue Eves.
The Mayor of Casterbridge.
The Trumpet-Major.
Under the Greenwood Tree.
Return of the Native.
The Well-Beloved.





Uniform Edition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $1,50 per volume.

Life's Little Ironies. Tales. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental $1,25.

A Group of Noble Dames. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1,25.

Fellow-Townsmen. 32mo, Cloth, 35 cents.

NEW YORK AND LONDON:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers.


All rights reserved.



PREFACE

OF the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and others partly written. In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might see the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.


September 1898.



CONTENTS



page

The Temporary the All
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
1
Amabel
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
4
Hap
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
7
"In Vision I Roamed"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
9
At a Bridal
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
11
Postponement
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
13
A Confession to a Friend in Trouble
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
15
Neutral Tones
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
17
She
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
19
Her Initials
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
20
Her Dilemma
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
21
Revulsion
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
25
She, to Him, I
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
29
   "" II
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
31
   "" III
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
33
   "" IV
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
35
Ditty
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
37
The Sergeant's Song
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
40
Valenciennes
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
42
San Sebastian
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
47
The Stranger's Song
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
54
The Burghers
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
56
Leipzig
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
62
The Peasant's Confession
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
74
The Alarm
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
86
Her Death and After
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
97
The Dance at the Phœnix
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
108
The Casterbridge Captains
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
117
A Sign-Seeker
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
120
My Cicely
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
124
Her Immortality
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
132
The Ivy-Wife
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
138
A Meeting with Despair
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
140
Unknowing
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
143
Friends Beyond
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
145
To Outer Nature
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
149
Thoughts of Ph—a
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
152
Middle-Age Enthusiasms
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
156
In a Wood
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
158
To a Lady
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
161
To an Orphan Child
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
163
Nature's Questioning
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
165
The Impercipient
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
168
At an Inn
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
173
The Slow Nature
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
176
In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
179
The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
185
Heiress and Architect
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
194
The Two Men
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
200
Lines
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
205
"I Look into my Glass"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
209


"At mothy curfew-tide
They've a way of whispering to me."

Friends Beyond, p. 145.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1928, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 95 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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