Thomas Hardy: Collected Lyrics
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Public-domain lyrics

A Confession to a Friend in Trouble

Thomas Hardy

“A Confession to a Friend in Trouble” as printed in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1899).

Thomas Hardy: Collected Lyrics Text 3 1899 · historical text
Public domainSong lyricsWessex verse
Complete public-domain lyrics

This text comes from Wessex Poems and Other Verses, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.

Verse 1

YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

Here, far away, than when I tarried near:

I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—

Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

I thought too strange to house within my brain

Haunting its outer precincts I discern:

—That I will not show zeal again to learn

Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain. . . .

Verse 2

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer

That shapes its lawless figure on the main,

And each new impulse tends to make outflee

The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;

Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be

Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

1866.

Credits

Written by Thomas Hardy

Words by Thomas Hardy. Historical text published in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1899); public domain. No claim to a modern recording or arrangement.

Source & text edition

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1899), “A Confession to a Friend in Trouble”

The 1899 published edition is in the public domain in the United States (pre-1931 publication). Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) died more than 96 years ago and his works entered the public domain in life-plus-70 jurisdictions in 1999; entries credited to other hands are held unless their author died more than 70 years ago.

How to read this historical text and its source

Read the source on Wikisource

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Retrieved 2026-10-27. Line spacing and section labels are adapted for reading. The displayed text follows the linked edition. Editorial notes and abstract artwork are by 52lyrics.
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