Thomas Hardy

Time's Laughingstocks Thomas Hardy

Book Excerpt: ...llecting the following poems I have to thank the editors and proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of them have appeared for permission to reclaim them. Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the main, as dramatic monologues by different characters. As a whole they will, I hope, take the reader forward, even if not far, rather than backward. I should add that some lines in the early-dated poems have been rewritten, though they have been left substantially unchanged. T. H. September 1909. THE REVISITATIONAs I lay awake at night-timeIn an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers, And recalled the h...