Thomas Hardy is a name most readers associate with the Wessex novels, but he clamed that poetry was his first love and he was a prolific poet. Following the negative criticism he received for his novel [Jude the Obscure]: published in 1895, he vowed never to publish another and so for the last thirty or so years of his life he concentrated on his poetry. Nine collections of poems were published before his death in 1928. Satires of Circumstance was published in 1914 and it is not surprising to find that in some of the poems, there appears to be a novelist struggling to get out: it contains stories told in narrative verse form and some which have a distinct quality of folk tales and folklore.

Hardy would have wanted to be remembered for his poetry and this collection demonstrates that he was a very fine and accessible poet. His major themes of time passing, of transience, of trying to locate something of value in a world of flux will speak to many people. He was 74 when this collection was published and so there is no surprise that death features in much of what he was writing. Ghosts and spectres also feature heavily, not so much as in a spiritual sense but more in a typical Victorian fascination with the supernatural. I get the feeling that he loved a good ghost story and there are some lovely examples here. There are poems of memory and loss, particularly the loss of loved ones, but his very best poetry features landscape, particularly its influence and how it shapes people and events; they have an existential feel: man alone in an uncaring godless universe. His novels have a feel of tragedy unfolding and his poems have that same aspect, but are more personal. I hear the poets voice in many of these offerings and it is a voice that can really sing, because first and foremost Hardy was a rhyming poet.

The collection divides into a number of sections the first of which is Lyrics and Reveries and the very first poem entitled "In front of the Landscape" sets the tone, because what does Hardy see in front of the landscape? why, dead people of course or rather the ghosts of dead people: the speaker sees himself wading through a landscape of the dead who are "smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision, / Dreaded suspect". Over half of the poems in this section feature ghosts, spectres or the dead. There are some real gems her though particularly "Channel Firing" which must be one of the best war poems from 1914; it imagines that the big guns firing in the English channel awaken the dead who are at first convinced it is judgement day, but then reflect it is ever thus and men do not learn; that war is "red yet redder" and that they are insane to start up over again.

The next section is titled Satires of circumstance and the poet indulges in some black humour as he tells short witty stories, in verse, of every day events. The old lover invited round to tea while the new husband is unsuspecting. A young woman is easily tempted to spend her Aunts hard earned savings for her gravestone at a dance. A man smirks at seeing the graves of a buried couple, because he has been the woman's lover, a man confesses to a murder on his death bed, and in "A Nuptial Chamber" a bride tells her new husband some unpleasant truths. These are indeed satires, but told with a lightness of touch which is enhanced by the verse form.

The next section of 21 poems are the crowning glory of this collection. They are mainly elegies written by Hardy for his first wife Emma. In day to day situations dredged up from memory Hardy reveals aspects of their relationship, we learn that after a passionate early life together they had drifted apart and while the poet regrets this has happened he also comes to accept the fact, but still wishes he could right some wrongs. Many of the poems are steeped in the landscape, Emma was from Cornwall on the Atlantic coast and she gave up the countryside that she loved to go and live with Hardy and although they both loved walking, Hardy knows in his heart that there was something missing for Emma. The poems are poignant and sad, but above all honest and they do celebrate the life of Emma. I have many favourites in this section but "At Castle Boterel is magnificent: Hardy has travelled back to where Emma lived in Cornwall and remembers the moment when he fell in love on a walk up to Boterel Castle. It was sunny that day but on his return some 40 years later it is raining, but he looks behind him and sees his younger self with Emma on that road and in the final stanza says:

I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall never traverse old love's domain
Never again.

Thomas Hardy's reputation as a poet suffered somewhat because he was seen as a Victorian poet looking backwards rather than a modern poet looking forward. There were seen to be problems even with his worth as a Victorian romanticist, because of his somewhat twisted diction. His sentence structure seems awkward at times; it has been described as knotty and he has a fondness to use a negative construction where other alternatives seem better. However he has been critically reassessed and his matter of fact realism his use of metre and rhyme, particularly his breaking with poetic rules has led him to be seen as a forerunner of modernism. I think this all points to an original voice there is no one quite like the poet Thomas Hardy.

This collection is a good example of his work and there is probably something here for everyone that likes poetry. Apart from some wonderfully moving poems there are folk tales, ghost stories, satires and black humour aplenty. The collection is free on the internet, dip in and you may be pleasantly surprised. I will be reading more of his poetry I have his collected poems sitting on the shelf. I rate this collection at 4.5 stars. ( )