| In Time of “The Breaking of Nations” | |
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| Thomas Hardy (1915) | |
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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 a thin 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: War’s annals will cloud into night Ere their story die. |
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| The Man He Killed | |
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| from “The Dynasts” by Thomas Hardy (1915) | |
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“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. “I shot him dead because— Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That’s clear enough; although “He thought he’d ’list, perhaps, Off-hand like—just as I— Was out of work—had sold his traps— No other reason why. “Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You’d treat, if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.” 
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Next page > “Back” and “Comrades” by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1915)... |
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