Texts and Excerpts

In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’

Thomas Hardy

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow, silent walk
with an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere there story die.

* * *

“Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee I will break in pieces the nations, and with thee I will destroy kingdoms.”—Jeremiah 51:20.