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

WESSEX POEMS AND
OTHER VERSES

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

PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS

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.

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 [21]
Her Dilemma [23]
Revulsion [27]
She, To Him, I. [31]
,, ,, II. [33]
,, ,, III. [35]
,, ,, IV. [37]
Ditty [39]
The Sergeant’s Song [43]
Valenciennes [45]
San Sebastian [51]
The Stranger’s Song [59]
The Burghers [61]
Leipzig [67]
The Peasant’s Confession [79]
The Alarm [91]
Her Death and After [103]
The Dance at the Phœnix [115]
The Casterbridge Captains [125]
A Sign-Seeker [129]
My Cicely [133]
Her Immortality [143]
The Ivy-Wife [147]
A Meeting with Despair [149]
Unknowing [153]
Friends Beyond [155]
To Outer Nature [159]
Thoughts of Phena [163]
Middle-Age Enthusiasms [167]
In a Wood [169]
To a Lady [173]
To an Orphan Child [175]
Nature’s Questioning [177]
The Impercipient [181]
At an Inn [187]
The Slow Nature [191]
In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury [195]
The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s [201]
Heiress and Architect [211]
The Two Men [217]
Lines [223]
“I Look into my Glass” [227]