Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Channel Firing

             1That night your great guns, unawares,
             2Shook all our coffins as we lay,
             3And broke the chancel window-squares,
             4We thought it was the Judgment-day

             5And sat upright. While drearisome
             6Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
             7The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
             8The worms drew back into the mounds,

             9The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
            10It's gunnery practice out at sea
            11Just as before you went below;
            12The world is as it used to be:

            13"All nations striving strong to make
            14Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
            15They do no more for Christés sake
            16Than you who are helpless in such matters.

            17"That this is not the judgment-hour
            18For some of them's a blessed thing,
            19For if it were they'd have to scour
            20Hell's floor for so much threatening ....

            21"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
            22I blow the trumpet (if indeed
            23I ever do; for you are men,
            24And rest eternal sorely need)."

            25So down we lay again. "I wonder,
            26Will the world ever saner be,"
            27Said one, "than when He sent us under
            28In our indifferent century!"

            29And many a skeleton shook his head.
            30"Instead of preaching forty year,"
            31My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
            32"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

            33Again the guns disturbed the hour,
            34Roaring their readiness to avenge,
            35As far inland as Stourton Tower,
            36And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.