Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Of the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four
pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and
other partly written.  In some few cases the verses were turned into
prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time
that they might see the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which
there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the
most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has
been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in
conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough
sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and,
as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons
rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.
September 1898.