Top 6 - Thomas Hardy

I'm not going to pretend that I've read every Hardy poem but that's going to be the case with nearly every poet so the fact that The Complete Poems is a big thick book containing almost 1000 of them only makes it slightly more likely that there's a hidden masterpiece that one doesn't know about. One might, if one was feeling a little bit philistine, say that any poet who writes 1000 poems could probably have achieved a similar effect with 200.
The Darkling Thrush must be the Hardy masterpiece, its little glimmer of light and hope in a gloomy universe and the lyrical desolation done so well in such a strict metre. Not far behind is The Voice, equally representative of Hardy, remembering his first wife and haunted by her.
More depth of winter desolation in Neutral Tones, in which the scene is 'as though chidden of God', is an early piece before he returns to poetry much later in life after becoming a prolific and wonderful novelist. Its concern with the lack of God is echoed in The Impercipient which asks, 'O, doth a bird deprived of wings/ Go earthbound wilfully !' but then a teasing God turns up in Channel Firing, musing on whether he'll ever blow the trumpet for judgement day with the dead who have been so rudely awoken by the noisy war.
A Broken Appointment is a fine reconciliation with disappointment, consolatory in the typically Hardy way that finds some kind of seemingly slightly inadequate compensation.