Poems 1912–13

Poems of 1912–1913 are an elegiac sequence written by Thomas Hardy in response to the death of his wife Emma in November 1912. An unsentimental meditation upon a complex marriage, the sequence's emotional honesty and direct style made its poems some of the most effective and best-loved lyrics in the English language.

In intensely personal poetic verse, Hardy addresses what the loss of a loved one means to the self. The obligation that forces one to abide faithfully to the memories of the dead, as well as reflection on and regret of the imperfections of their life together, pervade the poetry that Hardy produced as he reflected on the meaning of his own life in the new century. He wrote 15 poems named by the year of her death.