Poems of the Past and the Present


Poems of the Past and the Present is the second collection of poems by Thomas Hardy published in 1901. It is divided into 5 sections, War Poems, Poems of Pilgrimage, Miscellaneous Poems, Imitations and Retrospect.

The first poem is a tribute to Queen Victoria written in the week of her death. (Summary by Alan Mapstone) (2 hr 55 min)

Chapters

V.R. 1819-1901 1:44
WAR POEMS: Embarkation 1:26
Departure 1:29
The Colonel's Soliloquy 2:46
The Going of the Battery 3:10
At the War Office 1:18
A Christmas Ghost-Story 1:32
The Dead Drummer 1:15
A Wife in London 1:25
The Souls of the Slain 4:09
Song of the Soldiers' Wives 1:37
The Sick God 2:20
POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE: Genoa and the Mediteranean 2:18
Shelley's Skylark 1:48
In the Old Theatre, Fiesole 1:10
Rome: On the Palantine 1:06
Rome: building a new street in the ancient quarter 1:06
Rome: the Vatican 2:20
Rome: at the pyramid of Cestius 1:23
Lausanne 2:16
Zermatt 1:46
The Bridge at Lodi 3:00
An Invitation to the United States 0:58
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS: The Mother Mourns 3:50
"I Said to Love" 1:33
A Commonplace Day 2:31
At a Lunar Eclipse 1:13
The Lacking Sense 3:47
To Life 1:01
Doom and She 2:48
The Problem 0:52
The Subalterns 1:01
The Sleep-Worker 1:23
The Bullfinches 2:26
God-Forgotten 3:50
The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknowing God 1:51
By the Earth's Corpse 2:17
Mute Opinion 1:18
To an Unborn Pauper Child 2:13
To Flowers from Italy in Winter 1:08
On a Fine Morning 0:54
To Lizbie Brown 2:36
Song of Hope 1:15
The Well-Beloved 3:57
Her Reproach 1:20
The Inconsistent 0:50
A Broken Appointment 1:18
"Between us now" 0:54
"How great my Grief" 0:36
"I need not go" 1:01
The Coquette and After 1:00
A Spot 1:06
Long Plighted 1:22
The Widow 2:01
At a Hasty Wedding 1:02
The Dream Follower 0:45
His Immortality 0:56
The To-be-forgotten 1:40
Wives in the Sere 1:21
The Superseded 1:02
An August Midnight 1:08
The Caged Thrush freed and Home Again 1:33
Birds at Winter Nightfall 0:52
The Puzzled Game-Birds 0:46
Winter in Durnover Field 1:13
The Last Chrysanthemum 1:22
The Darkling Thrush 2:01
The Comet at Yalbury or Yell'ham 0:51
Mad Judy 1:07
A Wasted Illness 1:31
A Man 2:32
The Dame of Athelhall 3:19
The Seasons of her Year 0:54
The Milkmaid 1:33
The Levelled Churchyard 1:22
The Ruined Maid 2:04
The Respectable Burgher on "the Higher Criticism" 1:53
Architectural Masks 1:05
The Tenant-for-Life 1:33
The King's Experiment 3:02
The Tree: an Old Man's Story 3:00
Her Late Husband 1:44
The Self-Unseeing 0:42
De Profundis or In Tenebris 7:05
The Church-Builder 3:40
The Lost Pyx: a Mediaeval Legend 4:50
Tess's Lament 2:36
The Supplanter: A Tale 4:33
IMITATIONS, ETC: Sapphic Fragment 0:52
Catullus: XXXI 1:18
After Schiller 0:39
Song: from Heine 0:56
From Victor Hugo 1:06
Cardinal Bembo's Epitaph on Raphael 0:34
RETROSPECT: "I Have Lived with Shades" 1:37
Memory and I 1:30
ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι. 1:43