Hardy

Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing” is such an interesting poem to me, because it really says a lot about how WWI affected people. Obviously Hardy felt that the war had an effect on every aspect of this world and the next. The very first two lines of the poem, “That night your great guns unawares, / Shook all our coffins as we lay” (1077; ll. 1-2) make readers aware that the poem is a story told from the perspective of a dead man. Hardy feels that the war has had such an effect on the world that is has caused people to be disturbed from their eternal rest. It would take an extremely powerful force to wake the dead, and Hardy seems to think that the war has that kind of affecting-power. The war seems to have caused people to think “it was the Judgment Day,” (1077; ll. 4) but Hardy seems to think the war was not only enough to wake the dead, but it was also enough for God to act from heaven. The dead narrator says that the dead “sat upright” (1077; ll. 5) in order to prepare for the Final Judgment but then Hardy says:
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; (1077; ll. 9-12)
God has to call from heaven so that the dead will return to their graves, because he has not called for the end of the world yet, and since He has already been forced to act, He decides to speak to those already dead. He rebukes the people of Earth because of the havoc they have created and the fact that “They do no more for Christes sake / Than you who are helpless in such matters” (1077; 15-16). The dead cannot win souls for Christ, but the living can, and yet they spend all of their time now at war. This has angered God, which is made apparent through His speech. He then convinces them to return to their rest by saying:
It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need). (1077; ll. 21-24)
God is not even sure if He’ll call the Judgment because of the rest people will need after such a war. Hardy believes the war to be enough to change the plans of God Himself, and then he goes on to talk about how the war has been totally unaffected by this entire little episode. IN the last stanza Hardy says “Again the guns disturbed the hour, / Roaring their readiness to avenge” (1078; ll. 33-34). God Himself acted from heaven and yet the war continued. WWI must have truly seemed to be an unstoppable force.