An analysis of a range of Hardy's poems, including love poems, poems about ideas, people and places and about seasons and animals. The poems are grouped by subject and the text used for the poems is from Dr James Gibson's Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems. Each set of poems is followed by an analysis of the poems. The author has written several other books about Hardy and his poems, including Thomas Hardy (1968) and Thomas Hardy: An Annotated Reading List (1974).