Wessex Poems & Other Verses: “A man's silence is wonderful to listen to”

By Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in the hamlet of Upper Bockhampton about three miles east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, on 2nd June 1840.

Despite a fairly wide education and being an avid reader his parents thought it unlikely he would lead a successful scholarly or clerical career and he was apprenticed in 1856, at age 16, to a local architect whose speciality was in church restoration. Hardy’s only opportunity to read was in the morning before work between the hours of five and eight.

On the back of a failed love affair he moved to London and spent five years working as Arthur Blomfield’s assistant architect, also a restorer and designer of churches. Hardy though had become disillusioned with institutionalised forms of Christianity and abandoned any lingering hopes of ordination in the Anglican Church. However, his poetry was now flourishing, although it was still rejected for publication.

His novel ‘Desperate Remedies’, was published anonymously in 1871 and he now resolved to write full time though he was not yet in a position to achieve financial security or literary success. His second novel, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, appeared in 1872 and in 1873 ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, the most autobiographical of his works arrived. With ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ in 1874, came critical acclaim, public attention and financial success. 1878 saw more of the same with ‘The Return of the Native’, and the ensuing years saw him rise to ever greater popularity.

‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ was published in 1886. In 1891 came ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. It only saw publication after extensive alterations to its plot and deleting long passages to lessen the shock to the prudish Victorian audience who were dismayed by the seduction and ruin of a young girl by a rakish aristocrat. His last novel, ‘Jude the Obscure’, suffered the same fate when it was published in 1895. The uproar so disturbed him that he returned to poetry. In 1898 he had an earlier poetry collection published ‘Wessex Poems’

Hardy spent the years between 1903 and 1908 writing ‘The Dynasts’, an epic poem on the Napoleonic Wars.

In his twilight years came honours and awards from the great and the good and recognition of his stature as one of the most outstanding of British authors. George V conferred on him the Order of Merit in 1910.

In 1924 a new stage production of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, was staged. Meanwhile from 1920 to 1927 he worked, in secret, on his autobiography, which was later published after his death as the work of Florence Hardy.

Thomas Hardy OM died on the 11th January 1928.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839673665

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is best known for his novels, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895), which was denounced as morally objectionable. Hardy, disgusted with this reaction, declared he would never write fiction again and devoted the rest of his literary career to poetry.

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Wessex Poems & Other Verses by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in the hamlet of Upper Bockhampton about three miles east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, on 2nd June 1840.

Despite a fairly wide education and being an avid reader his parents thought it unlikely he would lead a successful scholarly or clerical career and he was apprenticed in 1856, at age 16, to a local architect whose speciality was in church restoration.  Hardy’s only opportunity to read was in the morning before work between the hours of five and eight.

On the back of a failed love affair he moved to London and spent five years working as Arthur Blomfield’s assistant architect, also a restorer and designer of churches. Hardy though had become disillusioned with institutionalised forms of Christianity and abandoned any lingering hopes of ordination in the Anglican Church.  However, his poetry was now flourishing, although it was still rejected for publication.

His novel ‘Desperate Remedies’, was published anonymously in 1871 and he now resolved to write full time though he was not yet in a position to achieve financial security or literary success. His second novel, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, appeared in 1872 and in 1873 ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, the most autobiographical of his works arrived. With ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ in 1874, came critical acclaim, public attention and financial success. 1878 saw more of the same with ‘The Return of the Native’, and the ensuing years saw him rise to ever greater popularity.

 ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ was published in 1886.  In 1891 came ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. It only saw publication after extensive alterations to its plot and deleting long passages to lessen the shock to the prudish Victorian audience who were dismayed by the seduction and ruin of a young girl by a rakish aristocrat. His last novel, ‘Jude the Obscure’, suffered the same fate when it was published in 1895.  The uproar so disturbed him that he returned to poetry. In 1898 he had an earlier poetry collection published ‘Wessex Poems’

Hardy spent the years between 1903 and 1908 writing ‘The Dynasts’, an epic poem on the Napoleonic Wars.

In his twilight years came honours and awards from the great and the good and recognition of his stature as one of the most outstanding of British authors. George V conferred on him the Order of Merit in 1910.

In 1924 a new stage production of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, was staged.  Meanwhile from 1920 to 1927 he worked, in secret, on his autobiography, which was later published after his death as the work of Florence Hardy.

Thomas Hardy OM died on the 11th January 1928.

Index of Contents

Preface to Wessex Poems

The Temporary the All

Amabel

Hap

In Vision I Roamed

At a Bridal

Postponement

A Confession to a Friend in Trouble

Neutral Tones

She

Her Initials

Her Dilemma

Revulsion

She, To Him, I.

She, To Him, II.

She, To Him, III.

She, To Him, IV.

Ditty

The Sergeant’s Song

Valenciennes

San Sebastian

The Stranger’s Song

The Burghers

Leipzig

The Peasant’s Confession

The Alarm

Her Death and After

The Dance at the Phœnix

The Casterbridge Captains

A Sign-Seeker

My Cicely

Her Immortality

The Ivy-Wife

A Meeting with Despair

Unknowing

Friends Beyond

To Outer Nature

Thoughts of Phena

Middle-Age Enthusiasms

In a Wood

To a Lady

To an Orphan Child

Nature’s Questioning

The Impercipient

At an Inn

The Slow Nature

In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury

The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s

Heiress and Architect

The Two Men

Lines

I Look into my Glass

Thomas Hardy – A Short Biography

Thomas Hardy – A Concise Bibliography

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.

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,

Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;

Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,

   Friends interlinked us.

"Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome—

Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;

Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded."

   So self-communed I.

Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,

Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;

Maiden meet, held I, "till arise my forefelt

   Wonder of women."

Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,

Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;

Let such lodging be for a breath-while, thought I,

   "Soon a more seemly.

"Then, high handiwork will I