Selected Poems

After the hostile reception of Jude the Obscure in 1896, Thomas Hardy devoted the last thirty years of his life to poetry. This generous selection of poems displays the wide variety of his metrical styles and stanza forms, as well as the philosophical scope of his work. While his verse is often seen as the culmination of late Victorian moods, Hardy combines irony and stoicism to forge a thoroughly modern stance against ruin. His poems illustrating the perversity of fate are some of the most...