Here are samples of Hardy's poetry, tying in with some of the themes we see in Return of the Native.

At Moonrise and Onwards

        I thought you a fire
    On Heath-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
    To the chattels of men of hire
        There in their vill.

        But by and by
    You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
    And then I could descry
        Your mood and mien.

        How well I know
    Your furtive feminine shape!
As if reluctantly you show
    You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
        Aside its drape. . . .

        --How many a year
    Have you kept pace with me
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
    Behind a hedge, or the bare
        Bough of a tree!

        No novelty are you,
    O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
    Whether I near Death's mew,
        Or Life's top cyme!

The Moth-Signal
(On Egdon Heath)

"What are you still, still thinking,"
    He asked in vague surmise,
"That you stare at the wick unblinking
    With those deep lost luminous eyes?"

"O, I see a poor moth burning
    In the candle flame," said she,
"Its wings and legs are turning
    To a cinder rapidly."

"Moths fly in from the heather,"
    He said, "now the days decline."
"I know said she.  "The weather,
    I hope, will at last be fine."

"I think," she added lightly,
    "I'll look out at the door.
The ring the moon wears nightly
    May be visible now no more."


She rose, and, little heeding,
    Her life-mate then went on
With his mute and museful reading
    In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure
    Came from the tumulus near,
And speedily waxed bigger,
    And clasped and called her Dear.

"I saw the pale-winged token
    You sent through the crack," sighed she.
"That moth is burnt and broken
    With which you lured out me.

"And were I as the moth is
    It might be better far
For one whose marriage troth is
    Shattered as potsherds are!"

Then grinned the Ancient Briton
    From the tumulus treed with pine:
"So, hearts are thwartly smitten
    In these days as in mine!"
 

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh:  "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so.  how arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
 

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
        --They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
        On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
        Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
        And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
 

He Never Expected Much

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
            Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
        Much as you said you were.
Since as a child I used to lie
Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
Never, I own, expected I
    That life would all be fair.

'Twas then you said, and since have said,
            Times since have said,
In that mysterious voice you shed
        From clouds and hills around:
"Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
    Till they dropped underground.

"I do not promise overmuch,
            Child; overmuch;
Just neutral-tinted haps and such,"
        You said to minds like mine.
Wise warning for your credit's sake!
Which I for one failed not to take,
And hence could stem such strain and ache
    As each year might assign.