Grateful for interpretations of Thomas Hardy's "The Breaking of Nations"?

Question

I am not a poet, but in sermons seek to use poems for imagery, to evoke feelings. In a recent sermon discussing Christ's resurrecting power, quoted from Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar."

Hope some with English, poetry background could help with this poem. I want to better understand "The Breaking of Nations." Learning about it would help provide better understanding of war and its impact. Perhaps a reader also might know of a similar poem on the topic.

The poem can be easily pulled up on Internet. Would think those in literature have poem. All thoughts, interpretation appreciated.

Come on there must be some English majors with a background in poetry, who can help a willing learner. Show your stuff, what we who have not delved into English have missed. Or even if you are not an English major, you can comment. What imagery does the poem evoke? Does it make any worthy statement, or is there really not a lot to it? IF YOU WERE TO WRITE A POEM ON WAR, WHAT POINT MIGHT YOU TRY TO MAKE? Finally, help any thoughts sought for old dog trying to learn new tricks of poetry.

The Breaking of Nations, Thomas Hardy

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

Only a 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.

Poem was found in poetry.about.com/library

Answer 1

Well, the poem outlines Hardy's belief that ordinary life continues--even when nations are "breaking" each other in the chaos of war, the ordinary cycle of life goes on: farmers continue to plow, young people continue to fall in love, etc. The imagery reinforces this sense of peace. I suppose the implicit contrast between these things he describes and what he doesn't describe (that is, the carnage of warfare) is the essence of his point. It might help you to know that Hardy originally planned the poem in response to the Franco-Prussian War, but did not actually write it until WWI. Good luck--it's a lovely poem.

Answer 2

Hardy is a remarkable poet: even to the extent that some people find his poetry better than his novels. I'm not among them, but his poems are well worth more attention than they often receive.

In the time of 'The breaking of the Nations' has as its background Jeremiah 51 - and more than just verse 20, from which it takes its title. Here are the relevant verses:

Jeremiah 51

20 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;
21 And with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider; and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his rider;
22 With thee also will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid;
23 I will also break in pieces with thee the shepherd and his flock; and with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen;

Here then we have the images of the destruction of nations [goyim/peoples], of youthful love, and of the ploughman.
Nations are transitory: but love and the plough - seed-time and harvest - might be thought to last at least so long as the earth endures.

But the first stanza has a sense of decay in it: the walk is slow, the horse is old. The harrowing of clods itself is an occupation for the dead time of the year - neither seed-time nor harvest. Maybe there is an echo of the barren landscapes of France, of Flanders blasted and destroyed. That they should 'stalk' merely emphasises the sense of menace which is subtly implicit throughout.

There is something too of the battlefield too in the second stanza. The 'smoke without flame' recalls images of the Front with which Hardy was all too familiar; where smoke from
the great guns drifts across the dead landscape.
Those images of the destruction of nature must have been intensely painful to Hardy, whose writing had been so focussed upon the rural.
There are echoes here too of Houseman - 'Is my team still ploughing?' and of Gurney 'Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows'.
The landscape, itself destroyed, is an image for the destruction of all that is familiar, known and loved.

Such hope as there is is understated, 'whispering by'. There is still an optimism here; not the jingoism of the war-mongers, but neither is it the deeper pessimism of the next generation, of Eliot's 'not with a bang but a whimper'.

Hardy may not believe in a god; but he is the truest humanist, and still has faith and hope that Love abides.
That this should be his conclusion in the face of war is both strange and contradictory; but the clues to the meaning of that may also be found in his ambivalence towards the beliefs not only expressed in Jeremiah, but also in the Christian myth as he sees it in his best known poem 'The Oxen'.

Thank you for reminding me of how good his poetry is; and good luck with ther sermon.