That night your great guns, unawares, <br />Shook all our coffins as we lay, <br />And broke the chancel window-squares, <br />We thought it was the judgement day <br /> <br />And sat upright. While drearisome <br />Arose the howl of wakened hounds: <br />The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, <br />The worms drew back into the mounds, <br /> <br />The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No; <br />It's gunnery practice out at sea <br />Just as before you went below; <br />The world is as it used to be: <br /> <br />"All nations striving strong to make <br />Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters <br />They do more for Christés sake <br />Than you who are helpless in such matters. <br /> <br />"That this is not the judgment hour <br />For some of them's a blessed thing, <br />For if it were they'd have to scour <br />Hells floor for so much threatening... <br /> <br />"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when <br />I blow the trumpet (if indeed <br />I ever do; for you are men, <br />And rest eternal sorely need)." <br /> <br />So down we lay again. "I wonder, <br />Will the world ever saner be," <br />Said one, "than when He sent us under <br />In our indifferent century!" <br /> <br />And many a skeleton shook his head. <br />"Instead of preaching forty year," <br />My neighbor Oarson Thirdly said, <br />"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." <br /> <br />Again the guns disturbed the hour, <br />Roaring their readiness to avenge, <br />As far inland as Stourton Tower, <br />And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/channel-firing/
