The Lyric Poet (1898-1922)
achieved the wonderful suggestion, accomplished by the employment of simple, dignified, and rhythmical language, of such a poem as Drummer Hodge:
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations rest
Each night above his mound.
Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations rest
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose, to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose, to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be,
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
Will Hodge forever be,
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
The Sick God closed these Boer-War poems. Here the delicious feeling of relief upon the conclusion of peace and the cessation of familiar horrors, led Hardy to the supposition that the growth of sanity and loving fellowship in humanity, (or, to translate it into the language of the Hardy-philosophy—the growth of consciousness in the all-pervading Immanent Will) was gradually bringing about a lack of interest in the art of war and an increasing feeling of disgust at its methods. Men, he felt,
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