Selected Poems

by Thomas Hardy, David Bromwich (Editor)

Overview

A generous selection of poems by a major Victorian writer, a virtuoso of traditional forms who came to be recognized as a uniquely inventive and original voice in modern poetry
 
This selection of poems by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), edited by David Bromwich, covers the range of Hardy’s extraordinary work: songs, ballads, and sonnets, dramatic monologues and elegies, along with poems that mark epochal events, such as the end of the Great War. This selection shows why Hardy has been admired as the most inward and personal of the moderns, yet also the most accessible and widely read.
 
Included here is the full and integral text of Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy, the final selection of his own work that Hardy chose to publish. Bromwich has selected more than one hundred fifty additional poems that cover the length of Hardy’s career, from Wessex Poems to Winter Words. His critical and biographical introduction sets Hardy’s achievement in the context of a career in prose and poetry that has no parallel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300095289
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2023
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is one of the great English writers, both in fiction and in poetry. His oeuvre includes eighteen novels, three volumes of short stories, two full-length verse tragedies, and over a thousand poems. David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. He lives in New Haven, CT.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

Table of Contents

From Wessex Poems and Other Verses
Hap
A Confession to a Friend in Trouble
Neutral Tones
Her Initials
San Sebastian
The Burghers
Her Death and After
Her Immortality
Friends Beyond
Nature's Questioning
I Look into My Glass
From Poems of the Past and the Present
The Going of the Battery
Drummer Hodge
The Souls of the Slain
Rome: The Vatican: Sala delle Muse
A Commonplace Day
Doom and She
The Subalterns
His Immortality
An August Midnight
The Darkling Thrush
A Wasted Illness
A Man
The Levelled Churchyard
The Ruined Maid
In Tenebris I
In Tenebris II
In Tenebris III
Tess's Lament
From Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses
Bereft
Shut Out That Moon
The Night of the Dance
Julie-Jane
A Church Romance
The Rambler
A Wet Night
God's Education
The Man He Killed
An uncollected poem
The Calf
From Satires of Circumstance
Channel Firing
The Convergence of the Twain
Beyond the Last Lamp
The Face at the Casement
"Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?"
The Going
I Found Her Out there
The Haunter
The Voice
At Castle Boterel
The Phantom Horsewoman
The Moth-Signal
The Death of Regret
Exeunt Omnes
From Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Versus
We Sat at the Window
Afternoon Service at Mellstock
To My Father's Violin
The Pedigree
The Oxen
Transformations
Great Things
Overlooking the River Stour
During Wind and Rain
Who's in the Next Room?
The Masked Face
The Clock of the Years
The Shadow on the Stone
An Upbraiding
In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'
Afterwards

Editorial Reviews

To recite the titles of poems by Thomas Hardy—‘The Darkling Thrush,’ ‘Channel Firing,’ ‘The Going,’ ‘During Wind and Rain,’ a list that could go on and on—is to compose a love letter to poetry in English. Hardy’s poems have lodged themselves in the heart of the language. In this magnificent selection, David Bromwich presents the verses chosen by the poet himself in 1929, adding a rich further gathering and a graceful and learned introduction. This book is a treasure. An essential volume.”—Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

“David Bromwich has produced a memorably good selection of Hardy. All those who already love the poetry will appreciate having a portable anthology done with such intelligence and taste, while new readers could not find a better introduction to this most individual of English poets in all his variety and range. The heart of this volume is the selection that Hardy made from his own poetry—so we have the interest of seeing what Hardy made of himself as well as an open invitation to decide what we make of him ourselves. ‘One can read him for years and years,’ as Philip Larkin said, ‘and still be surprised.’”—Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford

“This selected volume brings Hardy’s most memorable and moving poems to a new generation of readers in an edition that respects the poet by reprinting his own Chosen Poems, respects the reader by adding further poems that speak to the twenty‑first century, and offers an introduction that brings Hardy’s life and poetry into clear and convincing focus.”—Edward Mendelson, Columbia University

From the Publisher