Hardy’s ‘In Time of the Breaking of Nations’

By Scott Horton

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

Through Dynasties pass.

III

Yonder a maid and her wight

Come whispering by:

War’s annals will cloud into night

Ere their story die.

–Thomas Hardy, “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations,’” in: Moments of Vision (1917)