Hardy’s second book of verse opens with a reverie on the death of Queen Victoria and a sequence of poems on the Boer War: troops embarking at Southampton, wives left behind, the lists of the killed posted at the War Office, the drummer Hodge buried on the veld. Poems of pilgrimage to Italy and Switzerland follow, then lyrics of love, fate and doubt, including The Darkling Thrush.
Hardy turning from the novel to poetry at the turn of the century, already sounding like a modern. Download the free EPUB.