The voice
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Dorset, England, and he died on 11 January 1928 in Dorset, England, at the age of 87.
A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, Hardy was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.
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Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.