Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “WessexPoems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present”edition ,

WESSEX POEMS AND
OTHER VERSES

BY
THOMAS HARDY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1919

p. ivCOPYRIGHT

“Wessex Poems”:First Edition, Crown 8vo, 1898.  NewEdition 1903.
First Pocket Edition June 1907.  ReprintedJanuary 1909, 1913

“Poems, Past andPresent”: First edition 1901 (dated 1902)
Second Edition 1903.  First Pocket EditionJune 1907
Reprinted January 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919

p. vPREFACETO WESSEX POEMS

Of the miscellaneous collection ofverse that follows, only four pieces have been published, thoughmany were written long ago, and other partly written.  Insome few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed assuch, it having been unanticipated at that time that they mightsee the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, forwhich there was no equivalent in received English, suggesteditself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression ofa thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed goodgrounds.

p. viThepieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative inconception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to therough sketches given in illustration, which have been recentlymade, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal andlocal reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.

September 1898.

p.ixCONTENTS