Poetry: “And There Was Great Calm” by Thomas Hardy

November 11^th, 2018 will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the ending of the First World War, known as Armistice.  On "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" the hostilities that lasted by my count four years and 116 days and known at the time as “The Great War” came to an end.  Between all the participating countries, there were some 37,508,686 causalities, of which 8,538,315 were fatalities. Truly a tragic event in the history of mankind.  It was a war that changed the nature of western civilization, especially Europe.  Between books and poetry, I have posted often on the Great War.  If you want to scroll through those posts, you can find them here and here and here.

Today there will be lots of memorials and commemorations to this anniversary.  President Trump will attend  an event in France, and England will recreate the thousands of bells that rung on that day.  From the Guardian: 

“Inside might be a small selection of the Allies, some dark Italian officer with cameo face, a blonde English staff officer, a land girl on the bonnet, all mixed up with accretions of Australians wearing Union Jacks instead of their slouch hats, a gorgeous Indian in a turban and perhaps a bright blue Frenchman.”

The same report recorded ecstatic crowds converging on Downing Street where the prime minister, David Lloyd George, appeared and announced: “I am glad to tell you that the war will be over at 11 o’clock today.” He waved, then disappeared inside, but the crowds bayed for more until he reappeared at the first-floor window of No 10, along with Andrew Bonar Law, the chancellor, and Winston Churchill, the minister of munitions. All this, the paper said, as “the housemaids of Downing Street waved their dusters and feather mops overhead”.

This year, Armistice Day will fall on a Sunday. Thousands of local events are being coordinated by the Imperial War Museum. And again the ringing of bells will play a large part. A careful balance will be struck between the solemn sound of remembrance and peals of celebration.

Christopher O’Mahony, president of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, says he and others across the UK have been planning their contribution for years. “Wherever you have grown up, bells are part of the soundscape of the nation, whether it is a sound of joy as at a wedding or of sadness at a funeral,” he says.

In the early morning of 11 November more than 3,000 bell towers across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will ring out with the sound of “half-muffled” bells, like a slow march, in solemn memory of those who lost their lives.

To commemorate this anniversary I want to post this poem about the conclusion of the war, this time not by a poet who served in the war but one who was at the home front.  Most probably know of Thomas Hardy as a great 19^th century English novelist.  He was the author of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and others.  But at around the end of the 19^th century, Hardy felt his career as a novelist had come to an end and switched over to poetry.  He lived all the way to 1928, well into the century, and wrote abundantly.  He is regarded as one of the first modernist poets and today his reputation as a poet among critics is almost as well regarded as his reputation as a novelist.

“And There Was Great Calm” was obviously written addressing the Armistice.

And There Was a Great Calm

By Thomas Hardy

 (On the Signing of the Armistice, 11 Nov. 1918)

                                       I

There had been years of Passion—scorching, cold,

And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,

Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,

Among the young, among the weak and old,

And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

                                       II

Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught

Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,

Philosophies that sages long had taught,

And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,

And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.

                                       III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used

To 'dug-outs', 'snipers', 'Huns', from the war-adept

In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;

To day-dreamt men in millions, when they mused—

To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

                                       IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null,

Sirius they watched above where armies fell;

He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull

Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull

Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

                                       V

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly

Were dead and damned, there sounded 'War is done!'

One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,

'Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,

And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?'

                                       VI

Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance

To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,

As they had raised it through the four years’ dance

Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;

And murmured, 'Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?'

                                       VII

Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,

The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.

One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot

And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, 'What?

Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?'

                                       VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,

No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,

No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;

Worn horses mused: 'We are not whipped to-day;'

No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

                                       IX

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;

There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;

Some could, some could not, shake off misery:

The Sinister Spirit sneered: 'It had to be!'

And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, 'Why?'

Hardy’s central question, put in the mouth of the “Spirit of Pity” is “Why?”  There really was no satisfactory answer.  It should be noted that the title is taken from the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus awakes with the boat tossed in the storm:  “And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mk 4: 39).  Let us be thankful we did not live through that war.  And let us pray for all those fallen from the violence, for all who those suffered from injury and personal loss, and those that remained to deal with the problems from the turmoil.