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In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
Read by Anthony Thwaite
by Thomas Hardy
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ - Thomas Hardy - Read by Anthony Thwaite
'In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'' is Hardy's elegy on the First World War, written in 1915. He takes his title from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah in the Bible: Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms. What Hardy sees is the continuity of life and love even through violent times.
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
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 their story die.
Recording commissioned by the Poetry Archive, shared here with kind permission of the reader.