Book: Winter Words.

So far as I am aware, I happen to be the only English poet who has brought out a new volume of his verse on his ... birthday, whatever may have been the case with the ancient Greeks, for it must be remembered that poets did not die young in those days.
  This, however, is not the point of the present few preliminary words. My last volume of poems was pronounced wholly gloomy and pessimistic by reviewers-even by some of the more able class. My sense of the oddity of this verdict may be imagined when, in selecting them, I had been, as I thought, rather too liberal in addmitting flippant, not to say farcical, pieces into the collection. However, I did not suppose that the licensed tasters had wilfully misrepresented the book, and said nothing, knowing well that they could not have read it.
  As labels stick, I foresee readily enough that the same perennial inscription will be set on the following pages, and therefore take no trouble to argue on the proceeding, notwithstanding the surprises to which I could treat my critics by uncovering a place here and there to them in the volume.
  This being probably my last appearance on the literary stage, I would say, more seriously, that thought alas, it would be idle to pretend that the publication of these poems can have much interest for me, the track having been adventured so many times before to-day, the pieces themselves have been prepared with reasonable care, if not quite with the zest of a young man new to print.
I also repeat what I have often stated on such occations, that no harmonious philosophy is attempted in these pages-or in any bygone pages of mine, for that matter.


                                                      T.H.


Winter Words, though prepared for the press, would have undergone further revision, had Hardy lived to issue it on his birthday of which he left the number uninserted above.

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