Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles is the penultimate collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy, and was published in 1925. A miscellaneous collection, Human Shows included old, new, and updated poems.[1]
The most cheerful of Hardy's collections, Human Shows has been seen as reflecting something of an Indian summer on its author's part:[2] he himself, in his introduction to Winter Words, feared that he had been “too liberal in selecting flippant, not to say farcical, pieces into the collection”.[3] A pastoral tone prevails, often dramatising characters from Hardy's fiction, and at times Hardy even seems to burlesque some of his own tragic themes - of ironic accidents and patterned fate – as in the sketch "Snow in the Suburbs".[4]
The collection includes more serious poems as well – memories of friends and family gone, as well as of his first wife Emma.[5] "Alike and Unalike" records the beginning dissension in his marriage with his attachment to Florence Henniker;[6] and "Nobody Comes" records his lonely wait for his second wife Florence Dugdale to return after an operation in London.[7]