Channel Firing is a dark satirical poem written by Thomas Hardy in 1914, a few months before the beginning of World War I.
The poem describes the unsettling sounds of weapons and cannonballs being fired into the night sky. The sounds disturbs the resting bodies of a graveyard and causes the coffins to vibrate. The poem goes on to describe the people and animals waking up to the violent noises. Hardy uses the poem to describe the violence of war. He uses the collective pronoun “we” to unify the people against the war effort and branding it as both “crazy” and “cruel.”
The weapons are personified to bring a very real and human nature to the violence. Hardy comments on the madness of governments to destroy the world through bombs and wars. He questions whether the wold is in an apocalyptic state and why God allows humans to ensure such suffering if He is meant to be merciful.
