Poems

Poems List

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Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Tenant-For-Life

The Tenant-For-Life
The sun said, watching my watering-pot
"Some morn you'll pass away;
These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
Who'll water them that …

168
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Supplanter: A Tale

The Supplanter: A Tale
I
He bends his travel-tarnished feet
To where she wastes in clay:
From day-dawn until eve he fares
Along the wintry way;

200
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Sun on the Bookcase

The Sun on the Bookcase
Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree sh…

172
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Stranger's Song

The Stranger's Song
(As sung by Mr. Charles Charrington in the play of "The Three Wayfarers")
O MY trade it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all--
My …

254
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Sleep-Worker

The Sleep-Worker
When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see -
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong -
Th…

251
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Souls of the Slain

The Souls of the Slain
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of fac…

264
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Sick God

The Sick God
I
In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
From Israel's land t…

247
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Self-Unseeing

The Self-Unseeing
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here i…

272
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Roman Road

The Roman Road
The Roman Road runs straight and bare
As the pale parting-line in hair
Across the heath. And thoughtful men
Contrast its days of Now and T…

179
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Seasons of Her Year

The Seasons of Her Year
I
Winter is white on turf and tree,
And birds are fled;
But summer songsters pipe to me,
And petals spread,
For what I…

271
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Rambler

The Rambler
I do not see the hills around,
Nor mark the tints the copses wear;
I do not note the grassy ground
And constellated daisies there.
I he…

262
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Puzzled Game-Birds

The Puzzled Game-Birds
They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young--they cannot be -
These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?
They are n…

287
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Pity Of It

The Pity Of It
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local li…

248
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Peasent's Confession

The Peasent's Confession
"Si le maréchal Grouchy avait été rejoint par l'officier que
Napoléon lui avait expédié la veille à dix heures du soir, toute
question…

565
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Oxen

The Oxen
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease. …

256
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Mother Mourns

The Mother Mourns
When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,

250
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend

The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend
Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand
Attests to a deed of hell;
But of else than of bale is the mystic …

212
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Masked Face

The Masked Face
I found me in a great surging space,
At either end a door,
And I said: "What is this giddying place,
With no firm-fixéd floor,
That…

295
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The King's Experiment

The King's Experiment
It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's…

253
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Last Chrysanthemum

The Last Chrysanthemum
Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in th…

324
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Inconsistent

The Inconsistent
I say, "She was as good as fair,"
When standing by her mound;
"Such passing sweetness," I declare,
"No longer treads the ground."

213
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The House of Hospitalities

The House of Hospitalities
Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
And called in friends…

217
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Going of the Battery Wives. (Lament)

The Going of the Battery Wives. (Lament)
I
O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
Light in their loving as soldiers can be -
First to risk choosin…

253
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

The Ghost of the Past

The Ghost of the Past
We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral …

203