Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, and has for years been famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer of intense and sombre novels. His Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are possibly his best known, although his Wessex Tales and Life's Little Ironies are no less imposing. It was not until he was almost sixty, in 1898 to be precise, that Hardy abandoned prose and challenged attention as a poet. The Dynasts, a drama of the Napoleonic Wars, is in three parts, nineteen acts and one hundred and thirty scenes, a massive and most amazing contribution to contemporary art. It is the apotheosis of Hardy the novelist. Lascelles Aber- crombie calls this work, which is partly a historical play, partly a visionary drama, the biggest and most consistent exhibition of fatalism in literature. While its powerful simplicity and tragic impressiveness overshadow his shorter poems, many of his terse lyrics reveal the same vigor and impact of a strong personality. His collected poems were published by The Mac- millan Company in 1919 and reveal another phase of one of the greatest living writers of English. IN TIME OF THE BREAKING OF NATIONS Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk, With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch grass: Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by; War's annals will fade into night Ere their story die. GOING AND STAYING The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, ? These were the things we wished would stay; But they were going. Seasons of blankness as of snow, The silent bleed of a worl...