This poem was first published in 1916 in the Saturday Review, written at the editor’s request for a hopeful war poem. It has since become one of Hardy’s most celebrated works in the war-poetry tradition. The title is drawn from a verse in the Book of Jeremiah, and the poem explores themes central to Hardy’s writing: war, pastoral life, and the primacy of human relationships. By contrasting war’s large-scale destruction with the slow, commonplace instances of love and work, Hardy offers a consoling vision: war is transient, but life endures.
In reading this short poem, here are things to keep in mind to avoid missing important details:
- Read the poem slowly, noticing its quiet tone and simple imagery; these are intentional contrasts to the chaos implied by its title.
- Recognize that Hardy draws on the pastoral tradition, where rural life represents stability and permanence. Pay attention to the small, enduring acts — plowing, smoke rising, lovers meeting — as symbols of resilience.
- Even though this is a war poem, don’t expect dramatic battle scenes; the war remains a shadow. Instead, focus on how the poem’s understated rhythm and plain diction reflect a worldview that values life’s enduring, everyday patterns over ephemeral destruction.
In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations' Thomas HardyIOnly a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk.IIOnly thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.IIIYonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.
Summary
‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”‘ contrasts the grand, destructive imagery of its biblical title with three small, mundane rural scenes: a farmer ploughing with an old horse, thin smoke rising from burning weeds, and a whispering couple.
Through the fall of empires, the simple, ordinary rhythms of rural life, like a man plowing a field and lovers whispering, continue. The poem suggests that these enduring acts of everyday life are more powerful and lasting than the grand but temporary spectacle of war. These unassuming images unfold in a folk-ballad style whose simplicity mirrors the timeless rhythms of country life. War’s “dynasties” and “annals” may dominate history books, but Hardy contends that they fade swiftly, while love, labor, and nature persist, beyond the disturbances of the rise and fall of empires.
Expert Commentary
Insights by Ebuka Igbokwe
Bachelors Degree in English Literature
Historical Context
This poem was composed in 1915, during the First World War. When it first appeared in January 1915 in the Saturday Review, Britain faced mounting casualties and was planning to introduce conscription under the Military Service Act. As a result, the British public was fatigued from the economic and social strain of the protracted conflict. The poem was written at the editor’s request for “a few lines… to keep the torch alight in the black,” part of an effort to enlist literary voices in sustaining morale.
Earlier, in 1914, when Britain first joined the war, Hardy was one of the 53 literary figures who signed a declaration supporting Britain’s involvement in the conflict. As the war progressed, Hardy was shaken by the devastation caused by the war, and renounced it, declaring no ideal worth the cost of human misery at such a grand scale.
This poem reflects Hardy’s scepticism toward the rhetoric of glory and his general sympathy with human experience at the expense of grand ideas. The Saturday Review was known for wartime journalism and propaganda, and its readers would have recognized the irony in the tension between the capitalized abstractions of national glory, mentioned in passing, and the poem’s centering of pastoral life. By situating the catastrophe of war within the slow routine of farm labor and love, Hardy offered consolation rooted in a return to normalcy rather than in the fact of victory.
World War I was an actual “breaking of nations” in both a literal and figurative sense. Politically, it led to the collapse of long-standing empires like the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires; old borders were shattered, and new states were created. Socially and culturally, it fractured national identities, eroded public faith in governments, and disrupted traditional ways of life. The war cost millions of lives, destroyed economies, and devastated landscapes on an unprecedented scale.
Structure and Form
Thomas Hardy’s ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations“‘ is composed of three quatrains, each presenting a distinct yet interconnected image that reinforces the poem’s central theme: the endurance of ordinary life amidst the upheavals of history. The stanzas follow a simple and regular structure, with lines of predominantly iambic tetrameter and trimeter, producing a gentle, unhurried rhythm that mirrors the slow, continuous patterns of rural life. This metrical steadiness acts as a counterpoint to the violent and transitory nature of war, and subtly reinforces the poem’s meditation on the permanence of pastoral life.
While the meter is regular, Hardy occasionally introduces small variations, such as an initial trochaic substitution (“Only” in lines 1 and 5). This irregularity suits the poem’s pastoral tone and reflects the organic, unmechanical flow of rural existence. Longer and shorter lines alternate, mirroring the cycles of ploughing, love, and seasonal change that persist as the transient dramas of war fade. Metric irregularities also avoid a common meter’s overly predictable rhythm to draw attention to moments of thematic weight, such as in line 8, where the impermanence of dynasties is reflected in an incomplete trimeter (a shortening of the stanza’s ballad meter by a syllable).
In terms of form, the poem draws on elements of the pastoral lyric, in evoking countryside imagery, but it also functions as a form of anti-war poetry. Instead of directly addressing battlefields or political events, Hardy places human labor and rural romance in the foreground. Setting everyday scenes against the implicit backdrop of conflict, the poem subverts expectations of the war poetry genre, asserting that the rhythms of life outlast the rhythms of war.
Literary Devices
Hardy employs several literary devices to create a tone of quiet endurance, shift between pastoral intimacy and historical reflection, and anchor the poem’s vision of permanence in humble imagery:
- Enjambment appears in the first stanza and between the second stanza’s first and second lines, where the sense flows over the line breaks. This carryover mimics the unhurried continuity of rural labor and life, reinforcing that natural cycles proceed without pause, regardless of war’s disruptions.
- Capitalization functions as a form of irony. Hardy elevates abstract forces like “War” and “Dynasties” to formal, monumental status in how history and politics record them. Yet he immediately undercuts their permanence by showing that these supposedly mighty powers will “pass,” while the rhythms of ploughing, burning, and whispered love, presented more modestly, persist.
- Symbolism in the poem is grounded in concrete, unadorned images. The farmer and his old horse become symbols of continuity and generational labor; the “thin smoke without flame” rising from the burnt weeds suggests a non-violent, rejuvenating, natural recycle in contrast with war’s rabid destruction. The lovers’ whisper represents self-sustaining human bonds that go beyond political eras.
- Hardy’s title itself alludes to Jeremiah 51:20, a biblical passage about divine judgment and the fall of empires. This frames the poem’s contrast between the collapse of nations in war and the enduring rhythms of rural life, a juxtaposition that deepens the poem’s irony. By invoking scripture without direct elaboration, Hardy deepens the poem’s sense of timelessness and suggests that the rise and fall of powers is an old, recurring story, overshadowed by humble yet eternal natural life cycle events.
Title Significance
The title of the poem alludes to a Biblical passage. It is a quotation from Jeremiah 51:20, which reads in the New King James Version, thus: “You are My battle-ax and weapons of war: for with you I will break the nation in pieces; with you I will destroy kingdoms.” Therefore, ‘In Time of “the Breaking of Nations”‘ means “in wartime”. The quote calls forth apocalyptic imagery and following verses pronounce this breaking in pieces affecting, among others – farmers and oxen, young man and maiden, as well as soldiers and governments – characters that Hardy references in this poem. Though WWI wrought equally indiscriminate and wholesale destruction, Hardy takes a subtly different approach to this theme.
Detailed Analysis
Lines 1-4
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
In contrast to the title referencing a biblical-scale war, the first stanza presents a farmer breaking up soil in preparation for sowing with an old, tired, and barely adequate horse – a mundane pastoral scene.
The first stanza, like the second, begins with the word “[o]nly,” emphasizing the insignificance of the subject introduced. Lacking a finite verb that expresses a complete action, the stanza is a sentence fragment – it describes what remains without the completed thought. Hardy’s style here is intentionally fragmentary, mirroring the simplicity and unobstructive continuity of the scene. By opening without a clear grammatical beginning, the poem reflects the timelessness of the farmer’s work.
Hardy’s masterful use of sonic devices shines through in his economy of words. Long “o” assonance in “only,” “old,” “slow,” and “harrowing” creates a slow, somber tone that mimics the somnolent movement of the man and horse. Repetition of “l” and “w” sounds across the entire stanza forms persistent consonance, creating a soft, hushed quality. This is reinforced by the use of sibilance, which features in “clods“, “slow”, “silent”, “horse”, “stumbles“, “nods“, “asleep”, and “stalk”. Together, the assonance, consonance, and sibilance emphasize the peaceful, unhurried atmosphere, creating a measured, deliberate rhythm to reflect its calmness.
The word “stalk” carries with it the connotation of heavy, persistent, and purposeful movement of the horse, despite being “[h]alf asleep”. Not one word is said about the war alluded to in the title.
Lines 5-8
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Building on the first stanza’s image of a farmer and his horse breaking up soil in preparation for planting, this stanza presents the modest work of burning weeds. “Thin smoke without flame” symbolizes small, modest, and non-violent activities that do not shock the natural world, unlike the explosive and destructive energy linked with war. It is part of the continuous cycle of natural decay and renewal, and “will go onward the same” through the rise and fall of great political powers – “Dynasties pass”.
Hardy finally introduces indirectly in line 8 the subject promised by the poem’s title. Even this line is a deficient trimeter, as if to emphasize the short-lived nature of political structures established by and contested through warfare.
Long “o” assonance is repeated in this stanza in “only,” “smoke,” and “go“, reinforcing the slow, deliberate, and unhurried nature of this scene. To contrast the evanescent glory of political conflict with the staying longevity of agricultural rhythms, the poem sets the verb tense for burning grass in the future, while the verb tense for dynasties is set in the limited present.
Lines 9-12
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
In the third stanza, Hardy spotlights a couple conversing in intimate whispers and asserts that this familiar domestic scene will outlast the impact of momentous war. He deliberately uses the word “wight,” an archaic term for man, to emphasize how eternal and universal this tableau is. “Maid” and “wight” are terms that fit very well in the poem’s age-old, traditional ballad form, as does “[e]re” in line 12.
Likewise, Hardy’s choice of words to represent war – “Dynasties” and “annals” – have dignified Latin roots and are part of a learned person’s diction; they might even be considered pretentious. They are out of place in this poem’s simplistic, accessible language and folksy ballad form. The change in diction serves as a contrast between the folksy language kept alive by common everyday people, and old, defunct language which is used very occasionally, used to browbeat and intimidate but bearing little actual weight.
“War’s annals will cloud into night” is a metaphor that means the official yearly records of war will fade into obscurity over time, like the night swallowing the day, while simple love stories endure because they are the stuff of life – the basis of humanity.
The imagery of “cloud into night” reinforces the fading of the importance of the outcomes of war: war’s events slowly lose relevance, as if they are swallowed by darkness. This stanza also carries the same subtle irony echoed through the poem: wars are often presented as monumental and world-shaping, yet Hardy frames them as more perishable than a rural love story.
FAQs
The title alludes to Jeremiah 51:20: “Thou art my battle axe… with thee will I break in pieces the nations.” By invoking this line, Hardy places the current war in a vast, biblical-historical frame, suggesting it is just another episode in humanity’s long cycle of destruction, a cycle that, in the end, will be swallowed up by the timeless rhythms of the natural world.
Hardy uses a few pastoral figures as symbols to convey his message. The farmer and the horse represent enduring labor and the eternal connection between humanity and the earth. The “thin smoke without flame” from the burning weeds symbolizes the controlled, peaceful work of the countryside, contrasting with the chaotic fires of war. The “maid and her wight” represent the ongoing cycle of love and procreation, a guarantee for the future.
The simple language and traditional ABAB rhyme scheme give the poem a folk-song or ballad-like quality. This simplicity is deliberate and symbolic, employed to mirror the honest, unpretentious nature of rural life. The straightforward form delivers the poem’s universally accessible message, that essential life endures in the natural rhythms of love and work.
The tone is calm, reflective, and optimistic. It is neither celebratory nor patriotic nor as pessimistic as most of Hardy’s other works. Instead, it offers sober observation. The speaker presents the mundane scenes of rural life with a sense of certainty, recognizing in their simplicity a fundamental truth: work and love will endure. This constancy becomes a source of hope and stability in the face of the anxiety and violence of war.
