Channel Firing - Thomas Hardy
A Poetic Vision of War’s Echo from Beyond the Grave
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. 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:
“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening …
“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”
So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”
And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing” presents a powerful scene in which the dead are startled awake by naval gunfire off the English coast, mistaking the cacophony for Judgment Day. Once they realize it is merely "gunnery practice out at sea," the resurrected voices lament how little humanity has changed since their own deaths. God interjects to confirm that the living remain stubbornly fixated on war and conflict.
Hardy’s vivid imagery—coffins shaking, chancel windows breaking, and the ancient dead awakened—underscores the violence and futility of nations perpetually engaged in preparing for war. The poem’s setting near sites such as Stourton Tower, Camelot, and Stonehenge hints at the continuity of history and legend. Yet, despite centuries of human endeavor and the passage of time, the same patterns of aggression persist.
The speaker’s reanimated neighbors reflect on their own lifetimes, pondering whether preaching or religious devotion truly affected any change. The question arises: if even God himself expresses doubt—remarking wryly on whether there will ever be a final judgment—how can humankind break its cycle of destructive impulses? In this sense, the poem satirizes the idea of "progress," suggesting humanity often revisits the same conflicts across generations.
By giving voice to the dead, Hardy compels readers to view war’s noise and havoc through an otherworldly lens. These skeletal observers, momentarily awoken, find nothing new or improved in the world they left behind. The final lines, evoking the roar of guns reaching the ancient stones of Stonehenge, reinforce how deeply entrenched our warlike instincts are—echoing through time as reminders of a history that has yet to truly evolve.
Key points
• Hardy imagines the dead awakened by gunfire, underscoring the unchanging reality of war.
• The poem contrasts expectations of divine judgment with the grim normality of human conflict.
• References to Stonehenge and Camelot link current strife to ancient, ongoing cycles of violence.
• “Channel Firing” questions whether humanity’s warlike nature can ever be fundamentally altered.