Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY THOMAS HARDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1919
COPYRIGHT
“ Wessex Poems ”: First Edition , Crown 8vo, 1898. New Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907. Reprinted January 1909, 1913
“ Poems , Past and Present ”: First edition 1901 (dated 1902) Second Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907 Reprinted January 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919
Of the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and other 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.