Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses is a collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy, and was published in 1909. It includes poems of various dates,D. Wright ed., Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Penguin 1978) p. 442 mainly concerned with rural, familial and provincial life.I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943
Dates and thematics The collection contains poems of various dates, with almost a third of its 94 poems having been published before the book's publication.N. Wenborn, Reading Thomas Hardy (2012) p. 52 A not untypical thematic stress on life's ironies is present,I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943 though Hardy himself was insistent that the title phrase was a poetic image only, and not to be taken as a philosophical belief.T. & F. Hardy, Thomas Hardy (Ware 2007) p. 419-20 He also pointed out that behind the "I" of the poems stood not autobiography so much as "dramatic monologues by different characters".D. Wright ed., Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Penguin 1978) p. 442
Significant poems Hardy himself considered "A Trampwoman's Tragedy" the best of all his poems.I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1993) p. 943 Gilbert Murray thought "He Abjures Love" had a Horatian quality; and Ezra Pound saw "The Revisitation" as anticipating Hardy's Poems 1912-13.M. Seymour-Smith, Thomas Hardy (London 1994) p. 307 and p. 682
See also Casterbridge Fair
References
External links The complete text