In this poem Hardy shows the class and gender restrictions on women in Victorian England. .
Thomas Hardy wrote this poem in response to Horace Moule's suicide. Moule was a friend of Hardy and was upper-class, wealthy, and well educated. Hardy had a lot of respect for him, and his death saddened Hardy tremendously. Moule was one of the first supporters of Hardy's writings before he became a writer. .
Channel Firing (1914).
1That night your great guns, unawares, .
2Shook all our coffins as we lay, .
3And broke the chancel window-squares, .
4We thought it was the Judgment-day.
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5And sat upright. While drearisome .
6Arose the howl of wakened hounds: .
7The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, .
8The worms drew back into the mounds, .
9The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No; .
10It's gunnery practice out at sea .
11Just as before you went below; .
12The world is as it used to be: .
13"All nations striving strong to make .
14Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters .
15They do no more for Christés sake .
16Than you who are helpless in such matters. .
17"That this is not the judgment-hour .
18For some of them's a blessed thing, .
19For if it were they'd have to scour .
20Hell's floor for so much threatening . .
21"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when .
22I blow the trumpet (if indeed .
23I ever do; for you are men, .
24And rest eternal sorely need)." .
25So down we lay again. "I wonder, .
26Will the world ever saner be," .
27Said one, "than when He sent us under .
28In our indifferent century!" .
29And many a skeleton shook his head. .
30"Instead of preaching forty year," .
31My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, .
32"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." .
33Again the guns disturbed the hour, .
34Roaring their readiness to avenge, .
35As far inland as Stourton Tower, .
36And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. .
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The main theme of this poem is about the atrocities or horrific actions in war. This poem was published shortly before World War I, so it was like predicting the future.
