Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES BY THOMAS HARDY * * * * * MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1922 * * * * * COPYRIGHT * * * * * PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN * * * * * APOLOGY ABOUT half the verses that follow were written quite lately. The rest are older, having been held over in MS. when past volumes were published, on considering that these would contain a sufficient number of pages to offer readers at one time, more especially during the distractions of the war. The unusually far back poems to be found here are, however, but some that were overlooked in gathering previous collections. A freshness in them, now unattainable, seemed to make up for their inexperience and to justify their inclusion. A few are dated; the dates of others are not discoverable. The launching of a volume of this kind in neo-Georgian days by one who began writing in mid-Victorian, and has published nothing to speak of for some years, may seem to call for a few words of excuse or explanation. Whether or no, readers may feel assured that a new book is submitted to them with great hesitation at so belated a date. Insistent practical reasons, however, among which were requests from some illustrious men of letters who are in sympathy with my productions, the accident that several of the poems have already seen the light, and that dozens of them have been lying about for years, compelled the course adopted, in spite of the natural disinclination of a writer whose works have been so frequently regarded askance by a pragmatic section here and there, to draw attention to them once more.