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In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

Hardy, Thomas
I
1Only a man harrowing clods
2    In a slow silent walk
3With an old horse that stumbles and nods
4    Half asleep as they stalk.
II
5Only thin smoke without flame
6    From the heaps of couch-grass;
7Yet this will go onward the same
8    Though Dynasties pass.
III
9Yonder a maid and her wight
10    Come whispering by:
11War's annals will cloud into night
12    Ere their story die.

Notes

1] Jer. li. 20. [Hardy's note] "Thou art my battle ax and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations and with thee will I destroy kingdoms." Hardy confessed that this poem "contains a feeling that moved me in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, when I chanced to be looking at such an agricultural incident in Cornwall. But I did not write the verses till during the war with Germany of 1914, and onwards" (Florence E. Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy [1967]: 378-79).
The 1917 edition concludes:
1915.
("Saturday Review.")
harrowing clods: breaking apart lumps of earth. Back to Line
6] couch-grass: quack grass, a creeping weed. Back to Line
9] wight: man. Back to Line