Weathers:
A Selection of Thomas Hardy's Poems

With 16 wood engravings by Jane Randfield

October 2025

Hardy is best known as a novelist whose reputation as a Victorian ‘realist’ in the company of George Eliot laid the way for the early 20th century novels of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and D H Lawrence, but he considered himself a poet first of all. His collected edition runs to nearly a thousand poems, and his range is considerable – from contemplative philosophical pieces to ballads of village life, and from lyric poems describing nature to love poems; his mood is sometimes severe, occasionally even embittered, but a genuine humanity shines through even the most pessimistic of his works, and a satirical, yet kindly, eye enlivens some of his portraits of individuals, written in a tone not dissimilar to the sonnets of E A Robinson [see our page on Loose Canons 2: E A Robinson: Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford & Other Poems]. Hardy is a major poet whose importance, in our opinion, equals his reputation as a novelist.

We have compiled a selection of nearly sixty of Hardy’s poems which we hope will convey a useful and pleasing overview of his work. Many of his poems are very well known – ‘The Darkling Thrush’, ‘Afterwards’, ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations” ’, and ‘The Ruined Maid’, to name a few – and these will be present. But we hope that many of the poems we have chosen will come to the readers as fine surprises. There is a strong narrative element in many of Hardy’s poems, perhaps especially in those written in the Dorsetshire dialect, which capture the rhythm of country speech.

A particularly touching effect in Hardy’s poems on nature is the ‘casting’ of Nature itself, or Nature’s creatures, as characters, rather like choral figures, commenting upon – pitying, accusing, comforting in turn – the human creatures with whom it shares life and a primordial connection. The short lyric, ‘Wagtail and Baby,’ is a fine example:

A baby watched a ford, whereto
     A wagtail came for drinking;
A blaring bull went wading through,
     The wagtail showed no shrinking.

A stallion splashed his way across,
     The birdie nearly sinking;
He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,
     And held his own unblinking.

Next saw the baby round the spot
     A mongrel slowly slinking;
The wagtail gazed, but faltered not
     In dip and sip and prinking.

A perfect gentleman then neared;
     The wagtail, in a winking,
With terror rose and disappeared;
     The baby fell a-thinking.

English wood engraver Jane Randfield has provided a dozen superb images to illustrate Hardy’s poems. By a fortunate chance Jane lives in Bath, very close to the ‘Hardy country’ of Dorset. To produce the engraving to illustrate ‘Domicile’ – a poem in which Hardy describes the cottage in which he was born – she spent the day sketching the cottage on site, and many of the engravings are based on sketches made in places mentioned in the poems. All her renderings of nature, animals, and people reflect a deep affinity for, and understanding of, the English countryside, and in a reflection of the book’s title, she has rendered skies and the piercing or occluded light of the different seasons to extraordinary effect. Sixteen of her engravings provide an evocative visual accompaniment to the poems, and a curiously recognizable bear appears in her press device for the book.

SINGLE STATE: 120 copies. Small Crown quarto: 10½ by 7¼ inches [267 by 184mm]. 78 pages. Hand-set in Poliphilus & Blado in green and black with Ratdolt for display, on vintage Zerkall mouldmade paper. 16 wood engravings by Jane Randfield, all printed from the wood. Bound in half Japanese green silk and light green Zerkall Silurian paper printed with a pattern of David Bethel’s ‘Leaf’ ornaments in dark green and ochre. Printed spine label.
PRICE: C$950.00.

A limited number of copies are still available.

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