Selected Poems

This collection brings together the brightest gems among Thomas Hardy's poems. In his lifetime, Hardy published nearly 1,000 poems. His poetic works greatly varied in theme and structure, as did the critical response to them. Nonetheless, he is praised for his masterful lyrical poetry, which inspired later writers including Robert Frost and W. H. Auden. Like his novels, Hardy’s poems are deeply pessimistic and reflect upon the bleaker sides of human life – mortality, ill-fated love and the incessant passage of time.