“War’s Apology Wholly Stultified”: The Influence of Positivism on Thomas Hardy’s War Poetry
Despite never fighting in a war, Thomas Hardy wrote extensively on the moral and social implications of the two major conflicts that he lived through: the Boer War and World War I. His views on the subject were influenced by the Positivist
movement and its affiliated doctrine, the Religion of Humanity. Initiated by Auguste Comte in his System of Positive Polity, or Treatise on Sociology (1851-1854), the Religion of Humanity distills Positivism into an explicit expression of the essential unity of humanity such that universal Love could be extended from “the love of the tribe or community to the widest patriotism, or to sympathy with all beings who can be brought to share a common life”(Claeys 49). This “internationalist” sense of patriotism, in which love of one’s country is not predicated on the fundamental opposition to every other nation in a jingoistic fashion, was unpopular, but revolutionary in terms of its effect on Hardy’s view on war.
and change” (Complete Poems 84). World War I shifted the manner in which Hardy looked at war, as despite his work portending its outbreak numerous times, it still blindsided him, as “nobody was more amazed than he at the German incursion into Belgium” (F.E. Hardy 162). This essay will analyze Hardy’s war poetry under the lens of Positivism, illustrating the manner in which Positive ideology influenced a number of war poems and following the evolution of these influences through the Boer War, World War I, and beyond.
war poem in 1928, Hardy’s poetry had lost the Positivist belief in human progress and improvement, as World War I delivered the “coup de grace to any conception he may have nourished of a fundamental ultimate Wisdom at the back of things” (F.E. Hardy 164).
The Positive Message of Auguste Comte
An understanding of the Positivist framework that influenced Hardy’s war poems is essential to comprehending its effects on his work. The term positivism did not originate or exclusively belong to Auguste Comte; instead, the term, in its most general form, designates a form of philosophy that reduces the term “knowledge” to the byproducts of operations that are observable in nature (Kupp 8). Auguste Comte’s Positivism, which will be denoted with a capital ‘P’ to distinguish it from the more general term positivism, was first laid out in his work, Course on Positive Philosophy, a three-volume work that formally explained Comte’s law of three stages and
Comte predicted a “Western Revolution,” triggered by his reformation of theological faith on the basis of scientific and philosophical advancement, which would fill the spiritual vacuum of Christianity (Passages from the Letters 26). Unfortunately for him, support for the ideas espoused by his Religion of Humanity barely survived into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, while Comte has fallen out of favor, his ideas were of critical importance to major Victorian thinkers, including Hardy. As T.R. Wright states, “nearly all the major British thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century seem to have studied Comte, even if very few of them committed themselves to the Religion of Humanity. Comte’s influence…far outweighs his reputation” (1). John Stuart Mill in his book Comte and Positivism described the Religion of Humanity as “ on the surface of the philosophy of the age” (1). John Seeley, newly elected Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, reflected in 1869, “at present Comtism seems so irresistibly triumphant, that I have contented myself with…trying to…appropriate what is good in it”(Rothblatt 177). Hardy himself declared, “no person of serious thought in these times could be said to stand aloof from Positivist teaching and ideals” (Collected Letters III 53).
Hardy’s exposure to Positivism is well-documented and extensive. His Literary Notes contain more material from the System than from any other single work
be pessimism is, in truth, only such ‘questionings’ in the exploration of reality, and is the first step towards the soul’s betterment…”(557). Therefore, we will proceed with the understanding that Hardy had an intimate knowledge and understanding of Positive Philosophy; any precepts that he chose not to include in his writing were excluded intentionally and not because he was unfamiliar with them.
A lecture delivered by Joseph Kaines at the Positivist School in 1879 provides a useful framework for outlining the essential tenets of Positivism. Kaines declares that the term ‘Positive’ means “Relative, Organic, Precise, Certain, Useful, Real” (39). The first descriptor, “Relative,” essentially means that it is not ontological; it eschews discussion of metaphysical questions and ‘quasi-scientific’ speculation such as “how many angels can exist in vacuo” (Kaines 3). Science may observe the laws that govern the external order of the world, but go no further. The underlying truth about
ultimate causes is impossible for a human to ascertain. Yet, despite the fruitlessness of pursuing objective truth, Comte supports “steady subordination of the imagination to observation” because Positive Philosophy unlocks the use of the human
imagination, assuming it is “discovering and perfecting the coordination of observed facts” (Essential Writings 219). Moreover, it rejects the possibility of an “Objective Absolute,” by which Positivists dismiss any static, irrevocable truth or omnipresent being.
into opposing factions, and engenders distrust and uncertainty everywhere’” (Kaines 4). Hardy’s poetry criticizes the role of religion (or lack thereof) in war, but also incorporates “Jingo Patriotism” into the term ‘Theologism.” The treatment of fervent jingoistic patriotism in a religious context will be addressed to a greater extent later in this essay.
The organic aspect of Comte’s philosophy, as previously mentioned, derives specifically from the Religion of Humanity. Comte conceptualized a fresh theory in order to incorporate humanity more centrally into a single, catholic body. Humanity takes the place of traditional “theological fiction” and receives worship as a “Being whose nature is relative, modifiable, and perfectible” (Willey 197). Hardy captures the sentiment in Later Years, writing “the intelligence of this collective personality Humanity is pervasive, ubiquitous, like that of God” (F.E. Hardy 226). The centrality of humanity is juxtaposed with a dedication to unity and synthesis, such that “past, future and present” people will “co-operate willingly” with one another (Kupp 14). The interdependence of individuals, especially the focus on the history and future of the race, is of paramount importance to the subsequent analysis of Hardy’s poetry.
individuals (attachment) and respect for others (veneration), one culminates in the highest form of love; love of community, i.e. love of Humanity (System of Positive Polity 57). The positioning of the sexual instinct at the bottom of the progression is evocative of Plato’s ladder of love, in which appreciation of individual beauty ascends to knowledge of the essential form of beauty. Notably different, however, is Comte’s highest form of an ‘objective absolute,’ to use his terminology. Instead of a fixed, unchanging truth, Comte puts fellow humanity atop the ladder of love since people are the object of worship in his Religion.
The egoist interest represents a low rung on that ladder, as it embodies a narrow, self-interest that is wholly natural but not the highest end of human action. Glen Wickens points out that in Hardy’s poetry the “Junkers and Jingoists” believe that their “narrow kind” of patriotism is an elevated, glorified form (420). However, a more enlightened thinker realizes that their patriotism is comparatively base,
whereas “a broader kind of love extended to the whole globe” is truly elevated. Comte’s ‘military instinct’ is an example of the lower patriotism, while the patriotism that Hardy supports equates to the higher love of humanity. This higher love is founded upon a commitment to unity, which Hardy presents in his poems as being fragmented and dissolved by war.
Before considering Hardy’s pre-World War I poetry, we should note that, while Positive Philosophy did promote a general sense of progress for humanity, it also included elements of determinism. As T.R. Wright explains:
If the Positive Philosophy was optimistic, as is often claimed, it offered a very restrained form of hope, calling for a realistic appraisal of man’s harsh
This “restrained form of hope,” which was already beginning to fade at the end of the nineteenth century, was effectively obliterated by the effects of World War I (Kupp 16). As will be illustrated in Hardy’s poetry, a substantial ideological shift occurred due to the horrific results of World War I that caused many, including Hardy, to view Positive Philosophy as an ineffective tool for reconciling the effects of World War I on humanity. Indeed, Comte’s attempts to reconcile the dire reality of “man’s harsh predicament” with an optimistic focus on the best features of humanity are often clumsy and ill-fitting, which explains why the Religion of Humanity vanishes from view over the course of the Boer War and World War I.
C.H. Salter challenges that those “Positive themes” which Hardy discards are not necessarily Positive, but simply reflective of the zeitgeist of the nineteenth century (qtd. in Kupp 119). Though Hardy uses specific terminology that “almost certainly shows the influence of Comte,” his ideas and terminology are not necessarily explicitly linked to Positivism, according to Salter. He warns against attributing too much of the influence in Hardy’s writing to Positivism. His point is valid in two ways. First, Positivism permeates that era, as John Stuart Mill asserted when he described it as “on the surface of the philosophy of the age” (1). Thus, the era would reflect
used its themes, but rises above its conclusions to a more complex world that is far more painful than Comte’s (Kupp 5).
Hardy’s Early War Poetry: War “Divides Families”
Hardy’s first war poems are written about the Boer War. His “War Poems” were published in Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901, while Britain was still embroiled in the conflict in South Africa. Though often overshadowed by World War I and its poetry, the Boer War produced some excellent verse. Malvern Smith put it well: “the assumption too often has been that for all pre-1914 verse, Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ might serve as a perfect epitome, and that Owen’s poetry of ‘the pity of war, the pity war distilled’ was a rare new plant that sprang from the mudbanks of the Somme” (2). Thomas Hardy’s Boer War poetry focuses on the physical and metaphorical break between families that war creates, which counteracts the assertion by Jingoists that war has a unifying effect.
Jingoists had an affinity for justifying conflicts through a string of male antecessors, an “ancient highway” of sorts (Newbolt 47). Jingoism, a type of belligerent nationalism that was first used to describe British citizenry who
called Chauvinism; and in the United States, Bunkum” (Urban 46). The associations with chauvinism are particularly appropriate, as proponents of the jingoistic mentality utilized arguments that portrayed their feverish love of country as strengthening linkages between the past and present, specifically focusing on an ancient paternal tradition stretching back to ancestral roots. This “father-son” bond allows writers to allude to classic historical battles to lament that their predecessors would die in vain if the young men of the present did not go to fight.
Hardy targets jingoism because—like the traditional orthodox forms of religion that both he and Comte abandoned—it has, under the guise of improving unity, a divisive effect on humanity. Ernest Belfort Bax concluded that declining religious faith necessitated “some substitute” which was “gradually shaping in the form of modern “Patriotism”(qtd. in Claeys 3). John A. Hobson concurred in Problems of a New World, saying “Patriotism is displacing the older Piety, with its bible of imperial history, its ritual worship of the flag, its commemorative saints’ days, its drill-processionals, and its consecrated vestments” (95). Wickens aptly observed that “imperialism and militarism look for a cloak of tradition to cover their new demands of power…the one invoking the images of Emperors long dead, the other recalling past glories of action” (422). The worship of imperial history is the first element of the “Religion of Patriotism” that is critiqued by Hardy.
Hardy parallels the jingoist technique of invoking historical battles, but
the Longships,” Hardy incorporates the Positivist sentiment that military interests sever the desired union of humanity. “The Sailing of the Long-Ships” utilizes a male-oriented lineage to portray war as a continuation of the filial line. Newbolt repeats ‘father’ three times in 24 lines in “The Sailing of the Long-Ships” (Newbolt 9).1 Moreover, he addresses the debt that the younger generation owes, “fame ye owe your father,” for their fathers’ participation in the “wars of Freedom” (10). Thus, Newbolt presents war as an integral part of the British father-son relationship. In contrast, “Embarcation” portrays the women as isolated, a lone couplet in a new stanza: “Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile, / As if they knew not that they weep the while.” This isolation is fitting, as the female perspective dilutes the grandeur of the prospect of fighting (Kendall 12). For Newbolt, on the other hand, war creates an “ancient highway” that connects the current youth with his ancestors and successors in a manner that fills the “world with light” (11). Newbolt’s patriotism links two of its etymological roots: patrios (“of one’s father”) and patris (“fatherland”). Hardy, on the other hand, separates the concept of patriotism from the warrior paternal lineage by illustrating how war divorces the soldiers from Britain, their families, and basic humanity. A comparison between Newbolt’s poem and
“Embarcation” illuminates the disparities in each writer’s view on patriotism at the onset of the Boer War. Beyond the obvious similarity that both poems focus on soldiers departing for war, they also each include three-part historical references. The first poem in War Poems begin:
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands (CP 86)
The allusions to Vespasian and Cerdic refer to first- and fifth-century invasions of England, respectively, that commenced in Southampton, while the mention of Henry refers to Henry V who sailed from Southampton for France in 1415 (Bailey 115). Each reference is iconic, crucially important to English history and instantly recognizable, just like Newbolt’s allusions to Torres Vedras, Cape St. Vincent, and Trafalgar in “Sailing of the Longships.” Yet, instead of harkening to the fame these ancient soldiers accrued on “yonder shore,” Hardy laments that we continue in the “selfsame bloody mode / Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, / Still fails to mend.” This failure to “mend” suggests that the “ancient highway” perpetuates an anachronistic, archaic practice that is incompatible with the current era: war.
In the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I, Hardy expressed a belief that war was damned to fade out of existence. In 1901, Hardy wrote to William Archer, “oh yes, war is doomed. It is doomed by the gradual growth of the
invocation of the “ancient highway” like one might treat a sealed box of rats carrying the bubonic plague. The danger is still tangible and real, but it belongs in a past time; our modern sentiments have moved on, and the Jingoists should stop encouraging young men to go to war.
“Channel Firing,” another poem in the group, utilizes a similar style to
“Embarcation” and “Sailing of the Longships” by invoking historical events in a three-part style. The narrator harkens to Stourton Tower, Camelot, and Stonehenge in the final lines of the poem, saying:
Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. (CP 305)
This invocation has a similar effect to the trio of references in “Embarcation”:
acknowledging yet not celebrating the violent nature of England’s past. This allusion is particularly nuanced, insofar as the first two instances are examples of the
celebrated aspects of defending the realm, one from Danish invaders and one from Saxon interlopers whereas the final allusion is to one of human sacrifice of a different sort (Bailey 264). While the former locales reference English military
Hardy and his Wessex contemporaries would have been familiar with this folklore myth, which complicates the preceding two allusions. Its position at both the end of the list and the end of the poem expresses once again Hardy’s hesitation with unabashedly glorifying the English past, as the two heroic tales are tempered with a more equivocal reference. Indeed, the reference to Stonehenge at the end of a poem whose central focus is the build-up towards war seems to condense war to essentially human sacrifice and bloodshed, a theme older even than “starlit Stonehenge”
(Wickens 424).
Hardy’s warning against continuing in the “bloody mode of sacrifice”
denounces the jingoist invocation of tradition by extending the “ancient highway” ad absurdum, asking when the heritage of violence should no longer be advocated and
celebrated. The conclusion of “Embarcation” introduces the question of whether, many years from now, the world will “ever saner be.” The poem ends on an ostensibly pessimistic note that seems oppositional to the Positivist sense of progress.
Hardy’s poetry is tepidly supportive of human progress. Hardy alludes in “Candour of English Fiction” and “Apology” to Comte’s concept of ‘looped orbit,’ a theory in which a retreat backwards is a manner of gathering strength to spring forward again (Schweik 67). He even created a rendering of the image of ‘looped orbit’ in one of his notebooks (Appendix B). In this way, Hardy is supportive of the
Positivist spirit of a gradual movement forward towards improvement. In his
Apology, Hardy responds derisively to Positivist critiques that he is pessimistic:
As we will see in poems such as “Christmas: 1924,” Hardy’s poetry prior to World War I is comparatively more optimistic. He remains optimistic for ultimate human improvement, though the events that transpired during the Boer War and World War I lead him to question whether that improvement will occur in the near future. His optimism, however, is sometimes difficult to perceive in poems which lack any consolation for the atrocities of war, such as “Drummer Hodge.”
Hardy’s Boer War Poetry: Separated & Forgotten on the “Unknown Plain”
“Drummer Hodge,” a poem originally entitled “The Dead Drummer,” is a poem that describes the burial of ‘Hodge,’ a generic nickname for a country yokel or
“was one of the Drummers killed…of a village near Casterbridge, Dorchester”. The final stanza reinforces the tragic separation:
Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally. (CP 91)
This final stanza unmistakably parallels a later poem by Rupert Brooke titled “V: The Soldier” (1914), which reads:
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. (148)
Brooke’s lines seem to express an element of reconciliation insofar as, while Brooke cannot come physically to England,2 his presence on the Greek island Skyros symbolically brings England to him. Hardy’s Drummer Hodge, on the other hand, is “grown to some Southern tree,” firmly incorporated in a foreign object.
The burial of Drummer Hodge seems evocative of the hasty burial of John Moore in a shallow grave at the Jardin de San Carlos in The Dynasts. The Dynasts, an epic verse drama which Hardy wrote about the Napoleonic Wars based off the tales he heard at the knee of his grandfather and other veterans, was published in three parts in 1904, 1906, and 1908 (Kupp 88). In the Part Second, John Moore, a British commander, hopes desperately that “England will be satisfied” after he has been mortally wounded on the battlefield (The Dynasts 407). However, the attempt to bury him has to be aborted, after the burial crew comes under fire; one of the characters
remarks, “we must abridge these duties to the dead, / Who will not mind be they abridged or no” (414). The men leave Moore’s “half-dug” grave barely covered, mirroring the treatment of “uncoffined” Hodge. An onlooker remarks that “his strenuous feats / As long a lease within the minds of men as conquerors hold there” (The Dynasts 415). As will be shown later in the essay, the memory of conquerors, or “Dynasties,” fade quickly, and the memory of Moore will also fade, along with his body, in the Garden of San Carlos far away from home.
This scene, alongside “Drummer Hodge,” resists consolation, as there is neither earthly nor heavenly reward for the sacrifice (Kendall 21). Hodge and Moore are separated and divorced from their homes and family permanently; the poem makes no attempt at cathartic release. In a Positivist context, their result is the worst possible scenario. Yet, his fate is not unique in Hardy’s poetry, as a similar result transpires in “Christmas Ghost Story,” another poem in the group that depicts a soldier decaying in South Africa. The “mouldering soldier” inquires why Christian nations continually violate the “All-Earth-gladdening Law of Peace” which Jesus preached. The soldier’s moans rise up to “clear Canopus” which is the second
brightest star in the night sky but invisible as far north as England (Kendall 22). The poem’s emphasis on a disparate star echoes “Drummer Hodge” and visually depicts the boundaries to maintaining “all-earth-gladdening” peace, as the people in England simply cannot, literally and metaphorically, see in the same fashion as those people in South Africa in the midst of war.
Britain, both geographically and ideologically. However, Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” observes that his faraway death would expand the boundaries of England to include him. Hardy differs in that he decries the idea that war can produce unity and depicts the soldiers as entirely isolated and cut off. Brooke’s version implies that England, as an entity, ideologically incorporates him since he died in service of his country. Hardy’s version, like his refutation of the jingoist use of the paternal tradition to justify war, argues that Hodge and Moore’s deaths are an inconsolable tragedy, as they have, in multiple ways, been separated from their homes.
commemorated like a saint’s day, severed their unity with their families, for whom they believed they were sacrificing themselves.
Hardy’s references to the memories of the dead soldiers capture a Positivist expression of afterlife, inasmuch as one lives on through the memory of others. T.R. Wright states that, “Positivism provides [Comte] with an ‘ideal resurrection’ through the power of the imagination, a “subjective immortality” in which the dead live on in the memory of the living” (21). Comte himself wrote, “[t]o live with the dead
constitutes one of our most precious privileges…In the religions of the past, salvation was found in union with God: in the positive religion, salvation is found in unity with humanity” (Lévy-Bruhl 24). Therefore, afterlife is entirely contingent on the
memories of other humans. In his poem “Her Immortality,” Hardy directly alludes to this “ideal resurrection,” as the spirit of the narrator’s deceased lover declares, “In you resides my single power / Of sweet continuance here” (CP 56). If he died, she would fade eternally from the memories of humanity, as “by living, me you keep alive / by dying you slay me.” Hardy seems to highlight the absurdity of imputing the burden of maintaining one’s ‘immortality’ onto mortal beings, as the narrator blurts out, “I’ll guard me from minutest harms / That may invest my ways!” The comment is childish; his actions cannot stave off his death, and he is simply prolonging the
Thus, considering the Religion of Humanity’s version of immortality, there seem to be two points to be made about “Souls of the Slain.” First, the poem parodies those who think that they can control the perceptions of others. Like the narrator in “Her Immortality” who postures futilely about avoiding risk to prolong his life, the soldiers who assume a permanent legacy overlook both the innate unpredictability and mortality of humanity. Second, and more importantly, the poem debunks the belief that pursuit of military fame translates immediately into eternal glory, as jingoist writers would assert. The portrayal of war glory as eternal is absurd since, as we will see in “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations,’” glory lasts for as long as it sticks in human memory. Although some bitterly exclaim that they wish never to have known that their military accomplishments hold less weight than ‘homely acts,’ many of the souls express pleasure at hearing their ‘old kindness’ is prized now. Cherishing altruistic deeds is a highly Positivist ideal, as Comte wrote, “[h]e who has lived for others, he who has not sought life for himself, has found it: for he survives in others” (Lévy-Bruhl 340). Thus, while their quest for patriotic fame irreparably separated them from their families, their acts of altruism ultimately redeem them, elevating them above the purely military instinct and reuniting them with their loved ones. Their legacy lingers not in an abstract sense of the annals of history, but in the minds of other humans who remember them for kind acts, not decorations in battle.
1914 and onwards” (F.E. Hardy 178). The poem was originally prompted by an incident with an “old horse harrowing an arable field” and focuses on seemingly trivial agricultural activity which occurs “silently” and sluggishly, “half asleep as they stalk” (CP 543). This lethargic, dull scene is juxtaposed with the legacy of war, as the title alludes to Jeremiah 51:20 which reads, “[y]ou are my hammer and weapon of war: with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms” (English Standard Version). The epic scale of the verse contrasts with the homeliness of the poem’s setting. The poem declares that when “Dynasties pass” and “War’s annals will cloud into night,” the inglorious rural cycle will live on. Many of the Positivist
sentiments that appear in “Souls of the Slain” are replaced by Hardy’s iconic
reverence for rural life, but the piece maintains the same portrayal of the ephemeral nature of fame and glory. Therefore, the most mundane, rudimentary act of a man dully plowing a field has greater longevity than a glorious battle, disparaging the exclusive pursuit of glory.
Hardy’s World War I Poetry: Doubling Perspectives of Patriotism
While Hardy was definitively anti-Boer War, his critiques of World War I are far more qualified and reserved. Though he mostly advocated for an internationalist, ubiquitous love that should override national pride, Hardy maintained a fierce love of Britain. Hardy was not a radical in favor of the dissolution of nations into a
Before World War I, Hardy spurned pro-war poetry, writing to Florence Henniker about his verse: “I am happy to say not a single [poem] is Jingo or Imperalist, a fatal defect according to the British majority at present” (Collected Letters Vol II 277). Instead, Hardy viewed international politics with an
‘internationalist’ view, which distilled most succinctly in “His Country” where the narrator remarks “[w]hat is there to bound / My denizenship? It seems I have found / Its scope to be world-wide” (CP 539). For Hardy, true patriotism is expressed through not only a steadfast commitment to one’s nation, but to neighboring nations; a truly patriotic man is one who is not limited to love for his own nation. In this way, he asserts that the concept of patriotism is not diametrically opposed to the
improvements of the citizens of other nations. It is not a zero-sum game in which the growth of other nations de facto implies domestic weakening. Instead, it is a
promotion of the shared “common life” that he believes is not delineated by national borders.
The existence of this “common life” within the idea of patriotism allows Hardy to elevate patriotism beyond the base “military motor” to a higher altruistic
not free from some banalities which it is difficult to keep out of lines which are meant to appeal to the man in the street and not to ‘a few friends’ only” (Bailey 416).
The poem is not unique for its targeting of a specific audience. Hardy directs some of his other war poetry to various audiences for a variety of purposes. “England to Germany 1914” laments the fragmentation between the English and the German people, while “An Appeal to America on Behalf of the Belgian Destitute” appeals to the United States to aid the “seven million” refugees in need following the German
invasion of Belgium in 1914. “An Appeal to America” specifically appeals to America’s desire for approbation through initial flattery and then a higher appeal to its altruistic motivations. It does not, however, contain a sense of justification for the war nor advocacy for its continuation. It is not an American call to arms, but a call to American philanthropy. This distinction is significant, insofar as it illustrates the anomalous nature of “Men Who March Away.”
The physical structure of the poem immediately asserts the militant aspects of the poem, as its rigid repetitive framework harkens to that of a march. The final stanza almost precisely mimics the first stanza, aside from a crucial shift in mood from interrogative to indicative. The first stanza begins with a question:
What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us; What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
an apology of sorts, as if the content between the first and final stanza affirms the initial query. This unequivocal assertion for why soldiers fight (“the faith and fire within us”) is uncharacteristic of Hardy’s war poetry; the poem seems to indicate that the military instinct, a base tendency, is the exclusive motivator for the men going to war.
The narrator manipulates his addressees in the poem to express nuanced meanings. The two lines, which are repeated again at the end of the poem, ostensibly portray the speaker as “us”, or, more specifically, “men who march away.” In this reading, the “us” connects directly to “men” to create the colloquial “us men” phrase. The narrator forms a union with the men. However, in an alternate reading, the reader might pause at the end of the line after “us.” This effectively creates separation (imagine an invisible comma) and shifts the addresser to the addressee, as it appears that the men are now the recipients of the question. This is especially appropriate, considering that if Hardy had been a supporter of involvement in the war, he was himself far too old to participate. The dual association and dissociation seems fitting, as the poem ostensibly deviates significantly from Hardy’s Positivist “internationalist” ideals, but is indicative of his version of a positive patriotism (which, significantly, is not perfectly aligned with the Comtean definition). Moreover, the double perspective highlights the dilemma of an aged poet advocating for the departure of young men, many of whom will assuredly give their lives.
doubting observer in the previous conflict. This line is especially absurd when contrasting the critique for thinking too much—as it may “hoodwink you”—with Hardy’s “Apology” in which he describes his own writing as “questionings” (577). The narrator seems to be molding an “us” vs. “them” construction through his ongoing use of pronouns. He says, “dalliers as they be - / England’s need are we,” which seems to pit ‘they’ against ‘we’ by placing “we” in association with England and “dalliers” in association with “they.” Notably, ‘they’ is universally unspecified with name or really any identifying features, just an anonymous, uniformly doubtful mass. The double perspective parallels the double message that the poem delivers, as, in practice, it both propagandizes for the British government and ironically criticizes the tendency of older people removed from the conflict to encourage young men to go to war.
avid support of war categorically violate the internationalist ideology that appears in poems such as “His Country”?
I would posit that “Men Who March Away” is a measured expression of support that parodies the mindless furor of September 1914, while depicting the departure of the soldiers as an unfortunate necessity. The lines “Victory crowns the just, / And that braggarts must / Surely bite the dust” seem to represent the
regrettable banalities that Hardy described to Arthur Symons, while the lines “we well see what we are doing, / though some may not see” are indicative of the irony of older men encouraging youths to go off to war. The young men departing for the war, regardless of what they believe, are not aware of the ramifications of their actions, while the people dispatching them to go to war are cognizant of the implications of their encouragement. The poem, through this doubling, indicates that the participants in the war are not limited to soldiers departing for the front; the women, children, and elders are vicariously invested in their enlistment.
Thus, Hardy is aware of the effect of the poem; he can “well see” that its result is to buoy popular support for the war. He justifies it through an overriding
“The Sea Fight” exhibits a similar doubling of perspectives that produces difficult to reconcile inconsistencies with previous work through its apparent lauding of war glory. Hardy ostensibly contradicts his previous statements regarding the permanence of war glory, which he portrayed in his Boer War poetry as fleeting and ephemeral. “The Sea Fight,” which was written as a memorial to Captain Cecil Irby Prowse who died in the North Sea at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, describes the skipper of the Queen Mary going down with his ship, and dying “as heroes do” (CP 804). This poem appears to reflect a contradiction of “Souls of the Slain” which states that glory earned by war heroes is secondary to their domestic acts of kindness. “The Sea Fight,” on the other hand, declares that “more really now we view him…than while on earth we knew him.” Hardy repeats the final word of the fourth line of each stanza in the third word of the last line of the stanza:
Down went the grand ‘Queen Mary’, ‘Queen Mary’s’ captain, and her crew; The brunt of battle bare he,
And he died;
And he died, as heroes do.
These lines, if read genuinely and without irony, are difficult to reconcile with his previous treatment of returning war heroes in “Souls of the Slain.” Captain
An acknowledgment of the doubling of perspective lends the possibility that the poem is actually a harsh mockery of his heroic sacrifice. Similar to “Men Who March Away,” Hardy produces a dual meaning: a superficial meaning that creates both a consolatory effect and an underlying satire of war propaganda poetry. The poem, with its frequent repetition and tightly structured stanzas, evokes a sing-song effect that makes the poem sound like a cruel ridicule of a battle memoriam. The first and second lines echo each other like a nursery rhyme, and the word “grand” appears facetious when considering, to use Glen Wickens’ term, the bizarre carnival collective that the captain joins in the “ocean’s caverned dim profound” (416). The somber grandeur of a captain going down with his vessel is wholly debased by the image of him “gaily” flitting around the sea with his pals. Therefore, the poem, like “Men Who March Away,” presents a dual front: a consolatory remembrance of a British hero and an ironic criticism of war.
Common Humanity in WWI: Universal Love Between Opposing Soldiers
Hardy maintains a distinction between natural patriotism and vindictive international policy. He wrote in Later Years that “Patriotism, if aggressive and at the expense of other countries, is a vice; if in sympathy with them, a virtue” (227). Hardy targets the militarists as particular culprits for spreading the “aggressive” form of patriotism. The militarists are a select breed of jingoists committed to war at any cost. Hardy targets them specifically, saying that he wished the “instigator[s] of the ruin… their brood perish everlastingly.” Setting the urban elites apart, he puts forth the idea that rural people maintain an underlying connection with their counterparts in Germany. Hardy, whose novels predominately feature the overwhelmingly agricultural region of Wessex where he was born, adapts Comte’s concept of the interdependence of individuals to focus on the universal unity of rural people. This “selective” use of the Religion of Humanity allows Hardy to hold onto his belief in a bond between the citizens of Germany and England, despite the obvious physical and ideological conflict between the two. However, before looking at Hardy’s distinction between the bond of rural citizens and the instigation of the militant elite, we will explore the bond that forms between ordinary soldiers in the midst of war. Hardy finds a common unity between soldiers that illustrates the Positive ideal of universal love in two poems: “Often When Warring” and “The Man He Killed.”
Often when warring for he wist not what, An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak, Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot (CP 545)
This action is, for all intents and purposes, the quintessential example of the “subjection of self-interest to social feeling;” in Comte’s terms, it is the instinct towards benevolence and common humanity which is the highest instinct that one can achieve (Essential Writings 377). Though the enemy-soldier’s “deed of grace” might be forgotten, his act impacts a “larger vision than loud arms bespeak.” Thus, he is not cognizant of the impact of his actions. Indeed, “[k]nown it not” and “wist not what” provide bookends for the first two stanzas, and seem to express that, though these grandiose implications radiate out from his action, he never receives a palpable acknowledgment for a deed “forgot…amid the roar and reek.” The split in the poem at “yet” reflects an expansion beyond him in a way that almost abandons him. Though the soldier is unaware of the implications of his actions, he has brought together those two men in that brief moment into an expression of universal love. His actions ultimately dismantle the justification for war, as “war’s apology wholly stultified.” In a moment of triumph, the tiny act of kindness by the soldier silences the “roar and reek” and tears apart war policies until the rationale behind war is shown to be thoroughly ridiculous.
These policies, “evasion, code, and pact,” mirror the “late age of thought and pact and code” set out in “Embarcation,” and are examples of bureaucratic
that the impact of the gesture of basic humanity by the soldier supersedes bureaucratic technicalities, especially when they result in the abominations that occurred during World War I. While the underlying causes for the war were obviously far greater than simply the violation of the 1839 Treaty of London, the example illustrates the central conceit of “Often When Warring,” which is to highlight that “artificial rage” seems to result from the jingoist rabblerousing while the “natural mindsight,” which induces the soldier to express his common humanity with his enemy, comes from within.
This common humanity also appears in Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed,” in which a soldier reflects upon how his actions on the battlefield differ from how he would normally behave. The narrator comments:
Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place. (CP 287)
person. “The Man He Killed,” like “Often When Warring,” takes issue with war making strangers into de facto enemies, as this splinters the common humanity shared by all people. In both poems, soldiers at the front have realizations that their enemies are also human who share the same desires and needs as themselves. This empathy undermines the “apology” of war. Yet, World War I broke out nonetheless. Hardy asserts that the Positivist tendency towards common humanity that appears in “Often When Warring” and “The Man He Killed” is warped by the militaristic elites who incited the war.
Gregory Claeys writes that militarism is merely a perverted form of patriotism: tainting what should be the noblest of virtues, patriotism, with the poison of greed and injustice, and incapacitating us for taking an upright and elevated view of all questions of foreign policy. (97)
His assertions mesh smoothly with the declaration made by the Positivist society in 1882, “the establishment of an international policy based on morality is the most immediate need of our time” (Beesly 20). Friedrich von Bernhardi, a German general and military historian, is a prime example of an “instigator” who prompts Hardy’s reprisal against those who stirred up the war. Bernhardi asserts in Germany and the Next War:
Might gives the right to occupy or to conquer…War gives a biologically just decision…If we imagine, for example, that Silesia had fallen to Frederick the Great by the finding of a Court of Arbitration, and not by a war of unparalleled heroism, would the winning of this province have been equally important for Prussia and for Germany? War forged that Prussia, hard as steel, on which the New Germany could grow up as a mighty European State and a World Power of the future. (23)
pseudo-scientific arguments, rooted in Social Darwinism, that support the aphorism “Might makes right.” This phrase occurs most frequently when militant war hawks justify the surge in armaments and epitomizes the unwavering militarist position. This position on the “biological necessity” of war is oppositional to Positivism. As previously mentioned, Positivism is “relative,” which means that it scorns bold, quasi-scientific proclamations about the essential, underlying truth pertaining to ultimate causes.
complete absence of a sense of unity which should be implicit in interactions between people of all nationalities.
“His Country” serves as a primary example of the Hardy message, as the subject of the poem, a travelling English patriot, discovers “how patriotism of the genuine kind admits the right to similar sentiment in other people, and thus makes for that real international understanding which is based on the recognition of
common rights and a unity of aspiration” (Chakravarty171). Written in 1913 before World War I broke out, “His Country” is one of Hardy’s most explicitly Positive poems, particularly the final two stanzas:
I traced the whole terrestrial round, Homing the other side; Then said I, “What is there to bound My denizenship? It seems I have found
Its scope to be world-wide.” I asked me: “Whom have I to fight,
And whom have I to dare,
And whom to weaken, crush, and blight? My country seems to have kept in sight
On my way everywhere.” (CP 539)
is evocative of Comte’s systematic creed and his “excessive love of ‘system’…which led in his later life to something like monomania” (Wright 197).
The traveler’s conclusions are worthy of recognition, but the poem itself is vague and didactic; the story is commendable, but difficult to empathize with. The final stanza reads like a children’s storybook, where the protagonist brightly
concludes after having toured the world that, “they aren’t so different after all!” The rhyme of “everywhere” and “dare” contributes to childish spirit, as the traveler uses another sweeping generalization. Both the content and the style seem oddly
uncharacteristic for Hardy. This fantastical journey, in which the only specific location that is mentioned is “my dear country” which “ended with the sea,” is a strangely unconvincing portrayal of Positivism. Perhaps the simplistic, reductionist feeling of the poem is simply derivative of the Positive attributes it expresses. After World War I, the horrors that nations inflict upon each other cause people to dismiss the
German and English Citizens: The Implicit Unity of Rural Life in WWI
Other poems written during World War I, mainly “The Pity of It” and “Cry of the Homeless,” contain Positivist aspirations. However, those Positivist feelings are frequently stymied by the actions of a militarist elite who are responsible for creating the divisions between otherwise like-minded citizenry, as illustrated in “England to Germany in 1914.” J.A. Cramb’s Germany and England, published early in 1914, speculates whether war with Germany would in fact be “a dire event” and glorifies that theoretical conflict which quickly became a reality:
And one can imagine the ancient, mighty deity of all the Teutonic kindred, throned above the clouds, looking serenely down upon that conflict, upon his favourite children, the English and the German, locked in a death-struggle, smiling upon the heroism of that struggle, the heroism of the children of Odin the war-god. (152)
Cramb’s remarks directly oppose an earlier poem written by Hardy, “The Sick Battle-God,” in which the narrator declares that the once glorious mythology that
surrounded war in glory has faded as the “god’s gold nimb / And blazon have waned dimmer” (CP 97). In the poem, the narrator idly remarks that the “penmen’s
“England to Germany in 1914,” (Bailey 421). The poem denounces the vocal militarists, saying:
We have nursed no dreams to shed your blood, We have matched your might not rancorously Save a flushed few whose blatant mood You heard and marked as well as we
To tongue not in their country’s key; (CP 540)
These “flushed few” are clearly representative of people such as Cramb, who the narrator states are abnormal amongst the British. He also goes on to protest that certain “flushed few” of his countrymen speak “not in [Britain’s] key,” implying that— like the German “pines’ green moan”—Britain has a specific sound. The term “to tongue” means to assail with words, which fits Cramb’s vitriolic language. However, it also means to produce a note while playing a woodwind instrument, which fits in with Britain’s “key,” i.e. the system of notes that compose the tonal basis for a passage (OED). This theme continues later in his alliterative description of Germany, “[y]our shining souls of deathless dowers,” which produces a soothingly aesthetic image. The rhetoric is mellifluous, as the repetition of sibilant sounds smooths the aural impact of the alliterative pairs. The fluidity of the language furthers the motif that England and Germany are not fundamentally opposed to each other but temporarily out of tune and thus discordant.
However, though he denounces the few British who have contributed to this dissonance, his polemic is not limited to British elites, as he targets German
a special army order to his troops which included copies of a poem by Lissauer titled “Hassgesang gegen England” [Hate Song Against England] and, for his work, the Kaiser decorated Lissauer with the Red Eagle of the Fourth Class (Henderson 279). As evidenced by the support from the upper echelon that “Gott strafe England” received, Hardy selects the elites as culpable for the apparent hatred shared by the civilians of each nation.
narrator decries Germany for squandering its “ancient name” by acting in such a bellicose fashion.
The final stanza further locates the sonnet in a rural context by introducing superstition and witchcraft. The final stanza, which is the second part of a diatribe by “a Heart” against “whosoever…flung this flame” and started the war, suggests a connection between those unnamed instigators and wicked enchanters:
Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name, And their brood perish everlastingly.
The first word in the stanza, “sinister,” sets the tone for the end of the sonnet, which is supported by the allusion to “familiars.” While “familiars” can designate a close friend, it also refers to a partner spirit, often taking the form of an animal, which obeys a witch or some other person (OED). The word “brood” perpetuates the inhuman description of the instigators, as “brood” literally means progeny, especially of a bird, insect, or snake. However, it also means a state of mental concentration. Therefore, the poem yearns to both eliminate the instigators, and also their militaristic
mentality.
This unity is evident in “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations.’” There are no identifying features that would characterize the setting as a specific locale; the characters are wholly generic and interchangeable. Anonymity makes it possible to imagine this scene in any nation, illustrating the universality of agriculture as “this will go onward the same.” The agitator elites lack this longevity, as “Dynasties pass;” jingoists fade as “war’s annals…cloud into night.” Like the dead lover in “Her
Immortality,” dynasties dwell in people’s memories and only last as long as people remember them. Rural life, on the other hand, is both omnipresent and uniform; it quietly persists by necessity while sovereigns rise and fall from power.
This idea that rural people are united in spite of national boundaries and international conflicts is an example of Hardy adapting Positivist ideals. World War I induced Hardy to place certain limitations on his theory of international unity. Comte did not exclude groups from his universal love; even the most base and destructive instincts were still incorporated into humanity. Positivist Richard Congreve wrote “whatever divisions between man exist, races, national aggregates, tribes, empires, states, families, all are but integral parts, practically, of one whole; branches of one great family”(4). The central theme of Hardy’s “His Country,” human unity, becomes fragmented after World War I into a much more limited commitment to a bond between English and German citizenry, as shown in poems such as “The Pity of It.” This limited commitment reflects Hardy’s increasing dissatisfaction with the
Hardy’s Post-World War I Poetry: the End of Human Progress
Hardy mused after World War I that “the war destroyed all [his] belief in the gradual ennoblement of man, a belief he had held for many years, as is shown by poems like ‘Sick Battle-God’ and others” (Later Years 164). The decimation of his belief in human improvement is the final defeat for the Positivist themes in Hardy’s work. Hardy’s resistance to consolation causes his loss of faith in human betterment to be very apparent in his poetry. Edward Thomas wrote in review of Hardy’s volume Time’s Laughingstocks, “Mr. Hardy looks at things as they are, and what is still more notable he does not adopt the genial consolation that they might be worse, that in spite of them many are happy, that the unhappy live on and will not die” (Bailey 124). The contrast between Brooke’s “The Soldier” and Hardy’s “Drummer Hodge”
illuminates his refusal to assuage the reader’s dismay at a bleak outcome. While Brooke optimistically claims that the soldier’s burial is incorporated in England, Hardy detaches Hodge permanently from his home. Hardy’s aversion to consolation becomes more apparent as his belief in the progressive improvement of man falters in the midst of World War I. Hardy’s refusal to console his readers lets his loss of his faith in human progress show through very obviously, as indicated in “Then and Now.”
battles were fought / With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought” mirrors the line “In days when men found joy in war…” which is the first line of the Boer War poem “The Sick Battle-God.” Hardy harkens to a bygone era in both poems, but “Then and Now” bluntly rejects the suggestion of human advancement implicit in “The Sick Battle-God.”
The mood of each poem reflects the nature of the conflict that each describes. “The Sick Battle-God” outlines a human progression away from deplorable war “crimes too dire” to a conflict of a “saner nod” through the cultivation of reason (“modern meditation”) (CP 98). “Then and Now,” on the other hand, reflects the inverse progression, as warfare devolves into “modes once called accurst.”
These disparities are fitting; though the Boer War was an intense conflict which devolved into guerilla warfare by 1902, it was a far cry from the horrific bloodiness of World War I. J.F.C. Fuller, a British military officer and strategist, titled his memoir in reference to the Boer War with the popular phrase “The Last of the Gentlemen’s Wars” (qtd. Krebs 90). The phrase gained wide-spread usage after World War I because veterans viewed the Boer War as the last opportunity for men to choose whether to “make war like cannibals or make war like knights,” as W.T. Stead wrote in his book War Against War in South Africa (qtd. Krebs 114).
gallantry in war. This sentiment appears in Henry Newbolt’s “Clifton Chapel,” as the narrator instructs his adolescent mentee to “honour, while you strike him down, / The foe that comes with fearless eyes” (Vandiver 48). Later in the poem, the public school ethos becomes most explicit: “Henceforth the School and you are one.” The capitalization of “School” expresses the same dualism as “Then and Now,” as the public school is seen as not only an institution but as part of the larger chivalric education.
Hardy references chivalric training to drive home the fact that the resurgence of chivalric sentiment in the Victorian Era has unequivocally regressed into the lawlessness of total warfare (Krebs 90). Indeed, he remarked in a letter to a friend, “down to Waterloo, war was romantic, was believed in…but now we see too many details” (Collected Letters III 51). The decline from chivalry to unrestricted warfare is laid out in “Then and Now,” as Hardy alludes to the infanticide of Herod in the final stanza:
But now, behold, what Is warfare wherein honour is not!
Rama laments Its dead innocents:
Herod breathes: “Sly slaughter
Shall rule! Let us, by modes once called accurst, Overhead, under water,
Stab first.” (CP 546)
The reference to Herod invokes the biblical narrative of the Massacre of the
Then Herod…killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under. … A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;she refused to be
comforted, because they are no more. (Matthew 2:16-18)
Rachel, the long dead mother of the Northern tribes of Israel, bemoans the death of the children from her tomb in Ramah (Jeremiah 31:15). The homophonic relation between “innocents” and “innocence” reaffirms the death of the underlying trust in the “honourable rules” of the chivalrous men in the first two stanzas. Moreover, the chivalrous men are “in spirit,” a double meaning that indicates that they are
impassioned and spirited about the fight but also that they, and their attitudes
towards war, are deceased and only present in spirit. The parallel endings of the first and final stanza—“fire first” and “stab first”—illustrate the course of the poem, from the ethical code of chivalry guiding war to the anarchy of the final stanza, as the tyrant Herod declares that “Sly slaughter shall rule!” Unlike Hardy’s earlier poem “The Sick Battle-God” which concludes with an optimistic expectation that war will reflect a “saner nod,” “Then and Now” concludes without consolation, as Herod triumphantly encourages the reader to “stab first.”
Hardy’s final war poem, a short, epigrammatic poem titled “Christmas: 1924,” depicts the final blow to the prospect for human progress:
“Peach upon earth!” was said. We sing it, And pay a million priests to bring it. After two thousand years of mass We’ve got as far as poison-gas. (CP 914)
their actions through their mutually exclusive affiliation to God. “Christmas: 1924,” however, contains a core of bitterness that is not present in the earlier poem; it is ironic and thoroughly without consolation. It distills humanity’s progress over the course of two millennia to: “We’ve got as far as poison-gas.” Indeed, the poem implies that this is not progress, but a reversion to more savagery. The poem lambasts
Christian sentiment, specifically, which makes sense in the context of World War I, as most of the nations in the conflict were Christian nations. However, the critique does not seem solely limited to Christianity, but to all humanity.
Ellen Kupp notes that “World War I ultimately tolled a death knell for Positivism and its seemingly endless supply of optimism for humanity,” as the
unbridled idealism was simply unjustifiable when reflecting on the atrocities both on the battlefield and also to the level of faith and trust between nations (Kupp 9). World War I also tolled a death knell for Thomas Hardy’s faith in humankind to advance and improve, as the abominations that occurred led him to believe that human nature will induce people to “stab first.”
Conclusion
Despite the despondency in Hardy’s last war poems and the disappearance of Positivist themes from them, he still retained a glimmer of hope for human progress. However, his hopes were not close to substantiation, as his faith in the measured progress of humanity had been destroyed. He reflects:
the South African War that I hoped to see patriotism not confined to realms, but circling the earth, I still maintain that such sentiments ought to prevail. Whether they will do so before the year 10,000 is of course what sceptics may doubt. (F.E. Hardy 230)
His remark that his “South African War,” i.e. the Boer War, predictions were
premature reflects the impact of World War I on his sentiments. However, he retains ultimate faith in humanity’s ability to unify across national boundaries, albeit in the distant future.
Yet, despite this internationalist love, Hardy “finds in the war-spirit a direct contradiction to love and loyalty to one’s motherland” (Chakravarty 171). Thus, he reconciles his belief in the rectitude of the British cause through a doubling of perspectives in those poems, such as “Men Who March Away” and “The Sea Fight,” which are ostensibly supportive of the war. Hardy believed his simultaneous British patriotism and internationalism were not contradictions, as he wrote, “men endeavor to hold to a mathematical consistency in things, instead of recognizing that certain things may both be good and mutually antagonistic: e.g. patriotism and universal humanity; unbelief and happiness” (F.E. Hardy 54). The dichotomy between a poem like “Men Who March Away”—which promoted the war—and one like “Often When Warring”—which undermined the argument for war—prompted Glen Wickens to observe that Hardy had “one of the most varied responses to the issues and events of the Great War” (423). I propose that the variation in his response to World War I results from his attempts to integrate his aversion to the war (and war in general) with his love of his country.
consecrated to the service of peace” (29). This sentiment, once a dream shared by Hardy, was shattered by World War I. Hardy’s hope for a bright future despite the flight of traditional, Victorian values that appear at the beginning of “Then and Now” is ruined by the war. The title of the poem “Then and Now” literally describes the change from the old traditions to the current chaos, but also references the phrase, “every now and then,” as if to say that wars such as World War I or abominations like the Massacre of the Innocents happen “every now and then.” It is this casual, dark humor that reflects Hardy’s shedding of Positive themes in his writing and ideology.
Therefore, Hardy’s war poetry uses Positivism, with its optimistic outcome for humanity, to illustrate the even more intense tragedy of humanity’s failure in its attempts to improve (Kupp 121). The regression to the “sly slaughter” is even more wretched when seen in an optimistic context. The horrors of World War I would wound the traveler in the poem “His Country” more after he has developed his
Appendix A:
Poems by Thomas Hardy Embarcation
Southampton Docks: October 1899
HERE, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entere in,
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbor lands, Vaster battalions press for further strands, To argue in the selfsame bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, Still fails to mend. – Now deckward trampd the bands, Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile, As if they knew not that they weep the while.
A Christmas Ghost Story
SOUTH of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies – your countryman, Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking “Anno Domini” to the years?
Souls of the Slain
I The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race –
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of
face-And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me To brood and be still
II No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides, Or the ooze by the strand, Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion Of criss-crossing tides.
III Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings
Waved by mighty-vanned flies, Or by night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing Of corporal things.
IV And they bore to the bluff, and
alighted-A dim-discerned train Of sprites without mould
Frameless souls none might touch or might hold-On the ledge by the turreted lantern, far-sighted
By men of the main.
V And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them
For souls of the felled On the earth’s nether bord
Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred,
And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them With breathings inheld.
VI
Of the like filmy hue:
And he met them and spake: “Is it you,
O my men?” Said they, “Aye! We bear homeward and heathward To feast on our fame!”
VII “I’ve flown there before you,” he said then:
“Your households are well; But – your kin linger less On your glory and war-mightiness
Than on dearer things.” – “Dearer?” Cried these from the dead then “Of what do they tell?”
VIII “Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
Your doings as boys-Recall the quaint ways Of your babyhoood’s innocent days.
Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer, And higher your joys.
IX A father broods: ‘Would I had set him
To some humble trade, And so slacked his high fire, And his passionate martial desire;
And told him no stories to woo him and whet him To this dire crusade!’”
X “And General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?” --“Many mourn; many think It is not unattractive to prink
Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts Have found them new loves.”
XI “And our wives?” quoth another resignedly
“Dwell they on our deeds?” -- “Deeds of home; that live yet Fresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret;
XII —“Alas! then it seems that our glory
Weighs less in their thought Than our old homely acts, And the long-ago commonplace facts
Of our lives—held by us as scarce part of our story, And rated as nought!”
XIII Then bitterly some: “Was it wise now
To raise the tomb-door For such knowledge? Away!” But the rest: “Fame we prized till to-day;
Yet that heart keep us green for old kindness we prize now A thousand times more!”
XIV Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions
Began to disband
And resolve them in two:
Those whose record was lovely and true
Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions Again left the land,
XV And towering to seaward in legions
They paused at a spot Overbending the Race—
That engulphing, ghast, sinister place—
Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions of myriads forgot. XVI
And the spirits of those who were homing Passed on, rushingly,
Like the Pentecost Wind;
And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned
And surcease on the sky, and but left in the gloaming Sea-mutterings and me.
Drummer Hodge I
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 west
Each night above his mound.
II
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 amide the gloam. III
Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign
His star eternally. Channel Firing
THAT night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgment-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No; It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be:
“That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them’s a blessed thing, For if it were they’d have to scour Hell’s floor for so much threatening… “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).” So down we lay again. “I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!”
And many a skeleton shook his head. “Instead of preaching forty year,” My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.” Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. April 1914
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ 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 think 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:
His Country
I journeyed from my native spot Across the south sea shine, And found that people in hall and cot Laboured and suffered each his lot
Even as I did mine.
Thus noting them in meads and marts It did not seem to me
That my dear country with its hearts, Minds, yearnings, worse and better parts
Had ended with the sea. I further and further went anon,
As such I still surveyed, And further yet – yea, on and on, And all the men I looked upon
Had heart-strings fellow-made. I traced the whole terrestrial round,
Homing the other side; Then said I, “What is there to bound My denizenship? It seems I have found
Its scope to be world-wide.” I asked me: “Whom have I to fight,
And whom have I to dare,
And whom to weaken, crush, and blight? My country seems to have kept in sight
On my way everywhere.” 1913
The Pity of It
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word Of local lineage like “Thu bist”, “Er war”, “Ich woll”, “Er sholl”, and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon gird At England’s very loins, thereunto spurred
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we, “Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name, And their brood perish everlastingly.”
April 1915
Men Who March Away (Song of the Soldiers)
What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us; What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away? Is it purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye, Who watch us stepping by With doubt and dolorous sigh? Can much pondering so hoodwink you! Is it purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye? Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see— Dalliers as they be—
England’s need are we; Her distress would leave us rueing: Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see! In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just, And that braggarts must Surely bite the dust, Press we to the field ungrieving, In our heart of heart believing
Victory crowns the just. Hence the faith and fire within us
