In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"*

~ Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

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 fade into night
    Ere their story die.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

* Jeremiah 51:20