''Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses'' is a collection of poems by
English poet
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...
, and was published in 1922. While covering a typical (for Hardy) range of subjects - such as mismatchings, grotesqueries, and ironic memories - the poems generally take a musical shape, often remembering the past in
ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...
format.
Hardy's 'Apology'
Hardy prefaced the collection with a self-styled Apology, beginning prosaically by reporting some half of the poems included as recent, the remainder as old, but continuing with a broader defence of his poetic principles. Against charges of systematic pessimism, he maintained that his poetry was instead “really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate”.
Themes
As if to protest further the charge of pessimism, Hardy opened the collection with the cheerfully lyrical 'Weathers', though he closed it with the self-searching meditation 'Surview'. Other notable poems paid tribute to the friend of his youth,
Horace Moule, and to his second wife,
Florence Dugdale
Florence Emily Dugdale (12 January 187917 October 1937) was an English teacher and children's writer, who was the second wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. She was credited as the author of Hardy's posthumously published biography, ''The ...
; while others recalled once again Hardy's first wife
Emma, perhaps representing a final coming-to-terms with the memory of their marriage.
Influence
Many of the poems have been subsequently set to music, by a variety of different composers.
[I. Ousby ed., ''The Cambridge Companion to Literature in English'' (CUP 1994) p. 531]
See also
References
External links
* The complet
''Late Lyrics''
1922 poems
English poetry collections
Poetry by Thomas Hardy
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