"folk song settings of some of the poems by Thomas Hardy" -

I don't know - any poems I can think of by Hardy are pretty darned gloomy ... the dog digging up his bone from his master's grave; "The Man He Killed"; the children gamboling on the graves ... the one line I can quote (more or less accurately) from memory is, "Your smile was the only thing alive enough to have the strength to die" ... Makes Housman look like - wait a minute, is that one about the dog and grave by Housman? Guess I'd better go back to school ... see you in a few years ...