A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

by Thomas Hardy

IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS"^[1]

I

ONLY a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

II

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

III

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will fade into night
Ere their story die.

Thomas Hardy

1915.

1. Jeremiah li. 20.