Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy
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:
“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
“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.
Woodrow Wilson is famously quoted saying “[t]his is a war to end all wars," a view that is countered by philosopher George Santayana who said, "[o]nly the dead have seen the end of war.”* In "Channel Firing," Thomas Hardy makes the somber assertion that even for the dead, there is no end to war. In many religions, the dead live on in one form or another, sometimes waiting for a final Judgement Day as Christians believe. Even for those who don’t believe in an afterlife, the message of this poem is clear: war was here before us and it will be here long after we are gone.
"Channel Firing" is a conversation between the dead and God and an ironic conversation at that. In the first stanza, the sounds of guns from a training drill awaken the dead in coffins who believe Judgement Day, the prophecized time when God will judge both living and dead, has come. What immediately strikes me about this poem is that these men are not WWI veterans. The author, Thomas Hardy (pictured above) was born in 1840 and would have been over 70 years old when the First World War began.** Unlike poets such as Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen who were young enough to be soldiers, Hardy was an old man. He was known in the literary world mostly for his prose, including the famous novel Far from the Madding Crowd as well as many others, but he also wrote significant amounts of poetry, including a series of eleven poems influenced by the South African War^.
Hardy had thought and written about war prior to the outbreak of WWI. Perhaps this is why "Channel Firing" is written from the perspective of those who had died in a previous war rather than from the perspective of deceased WWI soldiers as seen in pieces like "In Flanders Fields." In fact, it is possible that it isn't even soldiers conversing with God, but normal civilians. Hardy does not explicitly say who the dead are, but clearly this poem expresses the sentiments of an older generation who recognizes the infinite futility of war.
It is in the third stanza that a new voice enters, the voice of God. Far from providing comfort, he says, in more words, that Judgement Day has not arrived, rather the sounds of guns firing mean the world is “as it used to be.” As usual, mankind is innovating ways to make wars even worse. Then God laughs, as if he finds a sort of wry amusement at the suffering of humanity, and says it will be better when he blows the trumpet… if he ever does. Blowing the trumpet is yet another reference to Judgement Day; the Bible says trumpets will sound to signal that day’s arrival. Hardy’s depiction of God is a satire that suggests God is tired of human behavior and is content to let humanity continue to destroy itself.
In response to what they have heard, a skeleton ponders aloud if the world will ever become better than when they died, asking “‘will the world ever saner be… than when He sent us under?’” The response from his fellows is a resounding no, and a Parson says “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer” instead of preaching. If the poem hasn’t already cast a dim view on God and thus Christianity, these lines certainly do. They express a preacher’s disillusionment with his former career and suggest it is futile to preach kindness and other Christian ideals when humans continuously engage in war and other destructive behaviors.
Finally, the final stanza brings the poem back full circle to the idea that war is an endless cycle of vengeance, its occurrence disturbingly predictable. This point is driven home by the simple fact that Hardy wrote this poem in April of 1914.^^ World War One would not break out for another three months.
*Choi, J. (2017, April 06). 'Never think that war ... is not a crime,' and more defining WWI quotes. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/04/world-war-i-quotes/100031552/
**Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy - Poems | Academy of American Poets. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://poets.org/poem/channel-firing
^Millgate, M. (2020, May 29). Thomas Hardy. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Hardy
^^A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy's 'Channel Firing'. (2020, August 03). Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://interestingliterature.com/2016/08/a-short-analysis-of-thomas-hardys-channel-firing/
Reading Hardy’s poem brings to mind pieces such as Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” which also reveals a nuanced view of war. While war is clearly damaging from the POV of both Hardy and Hemingway, both authors also seem to point to life moving forward despite the vast destruction and death. Perhaps each man wants us to learn some big lessons from seeming meaningless war.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, I think of Dalton Trumbo’s bitter tone as his “Johnny Got His Gun” character survives war trapped inside a broken, decimated body with a mind fully aware, but powerless to act. All these authors seem to try to expose and somehow mitigate mankind’s penchant for war. And while war is revealed in unique ways by writers, one can’t help but think that no amount penned poems or sad stories will transform what is perhaps Hardy’s central point: war is a ubiquitous element of the human experience.
I did this poem too! I really like your take on it, especially your commentary on the stanza where God implies he may never blow the trumpet. "A satire that suggests God is tired of human behavior and is content to let humanity continue to destroy itself" is just too good a line, especially if you look into Hardy's other works and the religious themes he would weave in. Here's an article I found you might find interesting about his relationship with Christianity: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/religion1.html
ReplyDeleteThe poem does carry the same theatrical language was many poems from the war, but the biggest difference is that it's not a war poem. As I know more about the war than poetry I looked at the historical context of the poem. Though ominous, the poem was written months before the war. The outbreak of the Great War was a surprise to no one, and Hardy may have had the foresight to seen the inevitable war. The poem may have been written as a warning of the upcoming conflict.
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