By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Channel Firing’ is one of his most popular poems; it was also, perhaps, the most prophetic. Written in April 1914 and published in May of the same year, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War, it anticipates the conflict that would break out later that year. (Hardy would later write about the war in his classic poem ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”‘.) A brief analysis of the poem should help to show why ‘Channel Firing’ is such a favourite anthology piece among Hardy’s poems.