Acquire Wessex Poems Generated By Thomas Hardy Readable In Version

have a copy of Jude the Obscure waiting on my bookshelf, but aside from that this is my first contact with Thomas Hardy, and since I picked up a cheap Wordsworth collection of his poetry, Ill be sure to dig into more.
The star rating is a little frivolous when it comes to poetry, Even among ardent readers I doubt a poetry collection is likely to capture a readers passions with every poem, I enjoyed only a scant few poems in this collection, but I liked those well,

Hardy works with many forms of rhyme that I dont have the names at hand for anyone interested inth century pessimism and ambivalent portrayals of nature as something beautiful, yet cruel, will find something to appreciate here.
I look forward to reading on while comparing Hardys lifeworks his poems with his novels, all the more famous, Very good collection of poetry I enjoyed many poems in this collection but I did have four favourites these were: The Burghers, Her Death and After, The Casterbridge Captains and Thoughts of Phena.
I would highly recommend this poetry collection, Hardy might be my favorite nonmodern English language poet so I will probably bump this up to five someday when no one is looking, This is his first collection of poetry and though published at the end of thes most of the poems are from thes so his greatest poetry was still ahead of him.
I know that's really the only reason I am leaving a star off, Not what I think are the greatest poems from this collection, but a handful of poems that struck me personally and I want to remember:

SHE, AT HIS FUNERAL

They bear him to his restingplace
In slow procession sweeping by
I follow at a strangers space
His kindred they, his sweetheart I.

Unchanged my gown of garish dye,
Though sablesad is their attire
But they stand round with griefless eye,
Whilst my regret consumes like fire!


SHE, TO HIM I

When you shall see me in the toils of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free

When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same
One who would die to spare you touch of ill!
Will you not grant to old affections claim
The hand of friendship down Lifes sunless hill

SHE, TO HIM II

Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,
Some others feature, accent, thought like mine,
Will carry you back to what I used to say,
And bring some memory of your loves decline.


Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!”
And yield a sigh to meas ample due,
Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid
To one who could resign her all to you

And thus reflecting, you will never see
That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,
Was no such fleeting phantomthought to me,
But the Whole Life wherein my part was played
And you amid its fitful masquerade
A Thoughtas I in yours but seem to be.


SHE, TO HIM III

I will be faithful to thee aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Goodbye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their loves fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.


SHE, TO HIM IV

This love puts all humanity from me
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by
But this I know, my being is but thine own
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.


And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
Ungrasped, though helped by nighregarding eyes
Canst thou then hate me as an envier
Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize
Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
The more it shapes its moan in selfishwise.



SAN SEBASTIAN August

“Why, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
As though at home there were spectres rife
From first to last twas a proud career!
And your sunny years with a gracious wife
Have brought you a daughter dear.


“I watched her today a more comely maid,
As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
Round a Hintock maypole never gayed, ”
“Aye, aye I watched her this day, too,
As it happens,” the Sergeant said,

“My daughter is now,” he again began,
“Of just such an age as one I knew
When we of the Line and Forlornhope van,
On an August morninga chosen few
Stormed San Sebastian.


“Shes a score less three so about was she
The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days, . .
You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,
But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,
And see too well your crimes!

“Wed stormed it at night, by the vlankerlight
Of burning towers, and the mortars boom:
Wed topped the breach but had failed to stay,
For our files were misled by the baffling gloom
And we said wed storm by day.


“So, out of the trenches, with features set,
On that hot, still morning, in measured pace,
Our column climbed climbed higher yet,
Past the faussbray, scarp, up the curtainface,
And along the parapet.


“From the battened hornwork the cannoneers
Hove crashing balls of iron fire
On the shaking gap mount the volunteers
In files, and as they mount expire
Amid curses, groans, and cheers.


“Five hours did we storm, five hours reform,
As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on
Till our cause was helped by a woe within:
They swayed from the summit wed leapt upon,
And madly we entered in.


“On end for plunder, mid rain and thunder
That burst with the lull of our cannonade,
We vamped the streets in the stifling air
Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed
And ransacked the buildings there.


“Down the stony steps of the housefronts white
We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape,
Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight,
I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape
A woman, a sylph, or sprite.


“Afeard she fled, and with heated head
I pursued to the chamber she called her own
When might is right no qualms deter,
And having her helpless and alone
I wreaked my will on her.


“She raised her beseeching eyes to me,
And I heard the words of prayer she sent
In her own soft language, . . Seemingly
I copied those eyes for my punishment
In begetting the girl you see!

“So, today I stand with a Godset brand
Like Cains, when he wandered from kindreds ken.
. .
I served through the war that made Europe free
I wived me in peaceyear, But, hid from men,
I bear that mark on me,

“And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way
As though at home there were spectres rife
I delight me not in my proud career
And tis coals of fire that a gracious wife
Should have brought me a daughter dear!”


“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.


But Time, to make me grieve
Part steals, lets part abide
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide, I've read Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd," but never have I read any of his poems until now, His "Her Dilemma" was an especially favorite of mine, The first stanza reads: "The two were silent in a sunless church, Whose mildewed walls uneven paving stones, And wasted carvings passed antique research and nothing broke the clock's dull monotones.
" Thomas Hardy claimed that his first love had always been poetry, but it was not until the age ofthat this first collection, written over a period of years, was published.
Wessex was the "partlyreal, partlydream" county that formed the backdrop for most of Hardy's writingsnamed after an AngloSaxon kingdom and modeled on the real counties of Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire.
The poems deal with classic Hardy themes of disappointment in love and life, and the struggle to live a meaningful life in an indifferent world, Although Hardy's poetry was not as well received as his fiction, he continued to publish collections until his death, and thanks in part to the influence of Philip Larkin, he is increasingly realized as a poet of great stature.
  This volume proved to be the smallest of Hardys eight volumes of poetry, It contained just fiftyone poems, many of them being sonnets,

The inflexible, sinewy style of these poems makes a break with tradition and this break is as startling as the fundamental modernity of their scientific outlook.


The style is often laboured, with awkward inversions, archaisms, and neologisms, However, all the poems reveal, without any doubt, Hardys integrity not only in the style in which they are written but also in his thought and his vision of life.


A few of the poems possess a lyrical quality which anticipates Hardys highest poetic achievements of the future, The poems in this collection include quite a few poems such as Neutral Tones and A Meeting with Despair, which have won recognition from critics,

This volume includes poems which are expressions of the feelings natural to every considerate young man coming to grips with life for the first time, There is a poem addressed to a beloved who has changed to grosser clay, There is the thought that suffering is more bitter because it falls from blind chance, and not from the action of some spiteful deity there is a mourn thât Nature is indifferent to human beings and there is the view that the children of a lady, who has married another man, will not be full of such high aims as they would have been if she had married Hardy.


The feelings do not ring fairly sincere they are not robustly felt they are, in truth, outpourings from the weak, undeveloped nature of an intelligent young man.


Only two of these poems, namely The heiress and The Architect, and Neutral Tones show any promise of Hardys mature poetic powers,
"Channel Firing"

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And

broke the chancel windowsquares,
We thought it was the Judgmentday

And sat upright.
While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altarcrumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebecow drooled.
Till God called, “No
Its gunnery practise out at sea
Just as before you went below
The world is as it used to be:

“And all nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder.
Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters,

“That this is not the judgementhour
For some of thems a blessed thing,
For if it were theyd have to scour
Hells floor for so much threatening.


“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet if indeed
I ever do for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need, ”

So down we lay again, “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.

“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer, ”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge, .