ofthe dead in English poetry."[10] Most ofHardy's poems,such as"Neutral Tones""and"A Broken Appointment",deal with themes ofdisappointment in love and life(which were also prominent themes in his novels),and 5 mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. Usingstylistic patternssimilar to those that he used in his novels Hardy sometimes wrote ironic poems,like"Ah,Are You Digging On My Grave,in which he employed twist endings in the last few lines or in the last stanza to convey that irony.Some,like "The Darkling Thrush"and"An August Midnight",appear as poems about writing poetry,because the nature mentioned in them gives Hardy the inspiration to write.His compositions range in style from the three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts to shorter poemssuch as"A Broken Appointment."Aparticularly strong theme in the Wessex Poems is the long shadowthat the Napoleonic Wars cast over the nineteenth century,for example,in "TheSergeant'sSong"and"Leipzig". A few of Hardy'spoems,suchas"The Blinded Bird"(a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting),display his love of the natural worldand his firm stance against animal cruelty,exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and hisof the dead in English poetry."[10] Most of Hardy's poems, such as "Neutral Tones'" and "A Broken Appointment", deal with themes of disappointment in love and life (which were also prominent themes in his novels), and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. Using stylistic patterns similar to those that he used in his novels, Hardy sometimes wrote ironic poems, like "Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave," in which he employed twist endings in the last few lines or in the last stanza to convey that irony. Some, like "The Darkling Thrush" and "An August Midnight", appear as poems about writing poetry, because the nature mentioned in them gives Hardy the inspiration to write. His compositions range in style from the three-volume epic closet drama The Dynasts to shorter poems such as "A Broken Appointment." A particularly strong theme in the Wessex Poems is the long shadow that the Napoleonic Wars cast over the nineteenth century, for example, in "The Sergeant's Song" and "Leipzig". A few of Hardy's poems, such as "The Blinded Bird" (a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting), display his love of the natural world and his firm stance against animal cruelty, exhibited in his antivivisectionist views and his 5’