Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

"Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses" is a collection of poems by English poet Thomas Hardy. The collection contains poems of various dates, with almost a third of its poems having been individually published before the book's publication. A not untypical thematic stress on life's ironies is present, though Hardy himself was insistent that the title phrase was a poetic image only, and not to be taken as a philosophical belief. He also pointed out that behind the "I" of the poems stood not autobiography so much as «dramatic monologues by different characters».