[David Rosenthal]

Tim,

"Proud Songsters" is in my 1995 edition of the Everyman's Library pocket Hardy. I love how the earth, air, and rain sonically "evolve" in the final line.

You mention the Pound quote -- I think Hardy wrote more like 900 poems. (Editing in -- I just read something that said 947! and most of them in the last thrity or forty years of his life, right?!). It's funny, my 1940 G. M. Young Selected has about 110, and the Everyman's has about 140 -- there are only about 15 that the two volumes have in common. And there are still others neither has that are contained in some broader anthologies I have. It is one thing to be prolific, but to be that prolific at such high level is supernatural. Not to mention his dozen or so novels, half of which are regarded now as classics of the language, and a couple collections of short stories for good measure. That's a lot of high-quality output. I said "supernatural," an uncharacteristic choice of words for me, but maybe not far from the truth:

On A Midsummer Eve

I idly cut a parsley stalk,
And blew therein towards the moon;
I had not thought what ghosts would walk
With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand
As if to drink, into the brook,
And a faint figure seemed to stand
Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,
I thought not what my words might be;
There came into my ear a voice
That turned a tenderer verse for me.



David R.