Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org TIME’S LAUGHINGSTOCKS AND OTHER VERSES * * * * * BY THOMAS HARDY * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1928 * * * * * COPYRIGHT _First Edition_ 1909 _Reprinted_ 1910 _Second Edition_ 1915 _Reprinted_ 1919 _Pocket Edition_ 1919 _Reprinted_ 1923, 1924, 1928 * * * * * PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH * * * * * PREFACE IN collecting the following poems I have to thank the editors and proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of them have appeared for permission to reclaim them. Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the main, as dramatic monologues by different characters. As a whole they will, I hope, take the reader forward, even if not far, rather than backward. I should add that some lines in the early-dated poems have been rewritten, though they have been left substantially unchanged. T. H. _September_ 1909. CONTENTS