Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses is by Thomas Hardy. The preface says its writer has to thank the editors and proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of the poems have appeared for permission to reclaim them. The preface says the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of 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.

In one poem a speaker on the open drouthy downland sees a figure break the skyline and cross near him, and the speaker rises and says Agnette. A note on another poem says it is, or was, a common custom in Wessex, and probably other country places, to prepare the mourning beside the death-bed, the dying person sometimes assisting. A poem headed News for Her Mother opens with lines about one mile more to where a door is, and goes on to mention harvest coming, mills strumming and apples fine. In a later poem, a man still goes on that he was not mistaken nor misled, and the speaker, the wife he had wed, says she felt like one forsaken.