Poems of the Past and the Present

by Thomas Hardy

POEMS OF THE PAST
AND THE PRESENT

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

CONTENTS

		PAGE
V.R. 1819–1901		[231]
WAR POEMS—
	Embarcation	[235]
	Departure	[237]
	The Colonel’sSoliloquy	[239]
	The Going of the Battery	[242]
	At the War Office	[245]
	A Christmas Ghost-Story	[247]
	The Dead Drummer	[249]
	A Wife in London	[251]
	The Souls of the Slain	[253]
	Song of the Soldiers’Wives	[260]
	The Sick God	[263]
POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE—
	Genoa and the Mediterranean	[269]
	Shelley’s Skylark	[272]
	In the Old Theatre, Fiesole	[274]
	Rome: on the Palatine	[276]
	,, Building a NewStreet in the Ancient Quarter	[278]
	,, The Vatican: SalaDelle Muse	[280]
	,, At the Pyramid ofCestius	[283]
	Lausanne: In Gibbon’s OldGarden	[286]
	Zermatt: To the Matterhorn	[288]
	The Bridge of Lodi	[290]
	On an Invitation to the UnitedStates	[295]
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS—
	The Mother Mourns	[299]
	“I said toLove”	[305]
	A Commonplace Day	[307]
	At a Lunar Eclipse	[310]
	The Lacking Sense	[312]
	To Life	[316]
	Doom and She	[318]
	The Problem	[321]
	The Subalterns	[323]
	The Sleep-worker	[325]
	The Bullfinches	[327]
	God-Forgotten	[329]
	The Bedridden Peasant to an UnknowingGod	[333]
	By the Earth’s Corpse	[336]
	Mute Opinion	[339]
	To an Unborn Pauper Child	[341]
	To Flowers from Italy inWinter	[344]
	On a Fine Morning	[346]
	To Lizbie Browne	[348]
	Song of Hope	[352]
	The Well-Beloved	[354]
	Her Reproach	[358]
	The Inconsistent	[360]
	A Broken Appointment	[362]
	“Between usnow”	[364]
	“How great myGrief”	[366]
	“I need not go”	[367]
	The Coquette, and After	[369]
	A Spot	[371]
	Long Plighted	[373]
	The Widow	[375]
	At a Hasty Wedding	[378]
	The Dream-Follower	[379]
	His Immortality	[380]
	The To-be-Forgotten	[382]
	Wives in the Sere	[385]
	The Superseded	[387]
	An August Midnight	[389]
	The Caged Thrush Freed and HomeAgain	[391]
	Birds at Winter Nightfall	[393]
	The Puzzled Game-Birds	[394]
	Winter in Durnover Field	[395]
	The Last Chrysanthemum	[397]
	The Darkling Thrush	[399]
	The Comet at Yalbury orYell’ham	[402]
	Mad Judy	[403]
	A Wasted Illness	[405]
	A Man	[408]
	The Dame of Athelhall	[412]
	The Seasons of her Year	[416]
	The Milkmaid	[418]
	The Levelled Churchyard	[420]
	The Ruined Maid	[422]
	The Respectable Burgher on “theHigher Criticism”	[425]
	Architectural Masks	[428]
	The Tenant-for-Life	[430]
	The King’sExperiment	[432]
	The Tree: an Old Man’sStory	[435]
	Her Late Husband	[439]
	The Self-Unseeing	[441]
	De Profundis i.	[443]
	De Profundis ii.	[445]
	De Profundis iii.	[448]
	The Church-Builder	[451]
	The Lost Pyx: a MediævalLegend	[457]
	Tess’s Lament	[462]
	The Supplanter: A Tale	[465]
IMITATIONS, Etc.—
	Sapphic Fragment	[473]
	Catullus: xxxi	[474]
	After Schiller	[476]
	Song: From Heine	[477]
	From Victor Hugo	[479]
	Cardinal Bembo’s Epitaph onRaphael	[480]
RETROSPECT—
	“I have Lived withShades”	[483]
	Memory and I	[486]
	ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι.	[489]

V.R. 1819–1901
A REVERIE