Thomas Hardy was a well known English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement. His novels The Return of the Native, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and The Mayor of Casterbridge are recognized as some of the greatest novels of the late 19th Century. But after harsh criticism over his views of sexual attraction in his novel Jude the Obscure, Hardy turned his back on novels and devoted himself to writing poetry.

Hardy's poems are sometimes lyrical and sometimes visionary. His poems of love are always quite touching, and his poems of war are very moving. Hardy has a way of reaching right into the soul. His poems dealing with the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War contain visions of war and its horrors that are as riveting as the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. These poems tell the story of war from many angles: they portray the soldiers in battle, the lovers left home, and the innocents touched by war. I used his poem A Christmas Ghost Story in my piece, Coda, which is the last movement of The Battle Cry. In this poem Hardy questions the morality of war.