I've started to node this collection of Thomas Hardy's poetry, I'll add links as each one is completed -DJSmurf
All texts are puiblic domain and taken freely from Project Gutenberg.

Poems of the Past and Present
By Thomas Hardy

Contents:


Poems Of Pilgrimage -
Genoa And The Mediterranean
Shelley's Skylark
In The Old Theatre, Fiesole
Rome: On The Palatine
Rome: Building A New Street In The Ancient Quarter
Rome: The Vatican--Sala Delle Muse
Rome: At The Pyramid Of Cestius
Lausanne: In Gibbon's Old Garden
Zermatt: To The Matterhorn
The Bridge Of Lodi
On An Invitation To The United States
The Mother Mourns
"I Said To Love"
A Commonplace Day
At A Lunar Eclipse
The Lacking Sense
To Life
Doom And She
The Problem
The Subalterns
The Sleep-Worker
The Bullfinches
God-Forgotten
The Bedridden Peasant To An Unknowing God
By The Earth's Corpse
Mute Opinion
To An Unborn Pauper Child
To Flowers From Italy In Winter
On A Fine Morning
To Lizbie Browne
Song Of Hope
The Well-Beloved
Her Reproach
The Inconsistent
A Broken Appointment
"Between Us Now"
"How Great My Grief"
"I Need Not Go"
The Coquette, And After
A Spot
Long Plighted
The Widow
At A Hasty Wedding
The Dream-Follower
His Immortality
The To-Be-Forgotten
Wives In The Sere
The Superseded
An August Midnight
The Caged Thrush Freed And Home Again
Birds At Winter Nightfall
The Puzzled Game-Birds
Winter In Durnover Field
The Last Chrysanthemum
The Darkling Thrush
The Comet At Yalbury Or Yell'ham
Mad Judy
A Wasted Illness
A Man
The Dame Of Athelhall
The Seasons Of Her Year
The Milkmaid
The Levelled Churchyard
The Ruined Maid
The Respectable Burgher On "The Higher Criticism"
Architectural Masks
The Tenant-For-Life
The King's Experiment
The Tree: An Old Man's Story
Her Late Husband
The Self-Unseeing
De Profundis I.
De Profundis Ii.
De Profundis Iii.
The Church-Builder
The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend
Tess's Lament
The Supplanter: A Tale
Imitations, Etc. -
Sapphic Fragment
Catullus: Xxxi
After Schiller
Song: From Heine
From Victor Hugo
Cardinal Bembo's Epitaph On Raphael
Retrospect -
"I Have Lived With Shades"
Memory And I
{Greek Title}

    3 Hours 57 minutes

And as I have walked life's path well worn,

I've seen friends die and my children born,

I've been loved and hated in equal measures,

suffered the pains and savoured some pleasures.

 

I've tasted sweet victory and bitter defeat,

I have been deceived and yet practised deceit,

I've been immeasurably happy and ineffably sad,

been the dutiful husband, been an absentee Dad.

 

I've lost and been loved, loved and been lost,

I've realised the value but not the overall cost,

Had a go at marriage, enjoyed time on my own,

I've met hearts of gold and hearts barely grown.

 

I've met bastards and angels along the route,

I've been acutely naive and less often astute,

Made loads of mistakes, got some stuff right,

I've acted with kindness, and reacted in spite.

 

And now I just try to do as I would be done to,

remembering to thine ownself always be true,

Accept that there are always differing views,

A mile is a lifetime in another man's shoes.

 

 

 

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