Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.

com

Channel Firing
POEM TEXT 35 As far inland as Stourton Tower,
36 And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
1 That night your great guns, unawares,
2 Shook all our coffins as we lay,
3 And broke the chancel window-squares, SUMMARY
4 We thought it was the Judgment-day
One night, you were firing powerful cannons, which, not
5 And sat upright. While drearisome realizing they were so loud, caused our coffins to vibrate. The
6 Arose the howl of wakened hounds: vibration also caused the windows behind the altar in the
7 The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, church to break. We woke up, thinking it was the apocalypse.
8 The worms drew back into the mounds, So we sat up. Meanwhile, the dogs that had been startled
awake started howling mournfully. A mouse in the church was
9 The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No; frightened and dropped a crumb it had picked up at the altar.
10 It’s gunnery practice out at sea Worms slithered back into the dirt.
11 Just as before you went below; The parish cow drooled. Then God told us, "It's not the
12 The world is as it used to be: apocalypse. They're just practicing firing their cannons out on
the ocean. Things are the same as when you were alive. The
13 “All nations striving strong to make world hasn't changed its attitude towards war.
14 Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters "Countries are still trying to make war—which was already
15 They do no more for Christés sake devastating—even bloodier and deadlier. Crazy leaders do
16 Than you who are helpless in such matters. nothing to promote Christian ideals of peace. Despite having
power, they do as little as you common dead people, who are
17 “That this is not the judgment-hour totally powerless.
18 For some of them’s a blessed thing, "In fact, it's a good thing for national leaders that it's not the
19 For if it were they’d have to scour apocalypse. If it were, I'd have to send them to Hell, where
they'd be doomed to clean the floor—all for the disturbances
20 Hell’s floor for so much threatening....
they've caused on Earth.
21 “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when "Hahaha. Things will get hotter on Earth when I do sound the
22 I blow the trumpet (if indeed trumpet of Judgment Day—that is, if I ever sound the trumpet. I
23 I ever do; for you are men, know you humans could surely use eternal rest, after all you've
been through."
24 And rest eternal sorely need).”
So we dead people lay down again. "I wonder if the world will
25 So down we lay again. “I wonder, ever be less crazy," one of us said, "than it was when God sent
26 Will the world ever saner be,” us to our deaths in the cruel century we lived in."
27 Said one, “than when He sent us under Many skeletons shook their heads in sadness. "Instead of being
28 In our indifferent century!” a priest for forty years," said the man buried next to me, Parson
Thirdly, "I wish I'd just smoked and drank."
29 And many a skeleton shook his head. Once again the night was filled with the sounds of the guns,
30 “Instead of preaching forty year,” which seemed to announce that they were ready to get
31 My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, revenge. Their sound reached far beyond the coast into the
32 “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.” mainland—to the war memorial Stourton Tower; to the
mythical Camelot; and to the ancient stone structure
Stonehenge, with the stars above it.
33 Again the guns disturbed the hour,
34 Roaring their readiness to avenge,

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
“saner”—less driven to the madness of war—than it was when
THEMES this person died in an entirely different “century.” The poem
thus implies that humanity has always been irrational and self-
THE SENSELESSNESS AND FUTILITY OF destructive. And judging by this gunnery practice, there’s little
WAR hope for the future.

“Channel Firing” is a bleak, satirical critique of war The last two lines suggest how embedded war is in humanity’s
and particularly of arms races—the rush for nations to build history. The sound of the guns extends “As far inland as
increasingly devastating weapons of war. In the poem, the Stourton Tower, / And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.”
advancement of modern technology has simply allowed Stourton Tower was built in the 1700s, Camelot was the
countries to “make / Red war yet redder” (i.e., to make warfare mythical capital of King Arthur’s court in the Middle Ages, and
bloodier) at a much faster rate. The speaker doesn’t look on Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument. That is, the sound of
these advances with patriotic pride, nor as forces with any war pervades not just space, but also history. Each of these
potential to make the world a better place. Instead, the speaker place, real or fictional, represent distinct elements of English
sees countries as making the same mistakes they’ve made history. Yet instead of feeling pride in such history—the kind of
throughout history. War is utterly misguided “madness,” the pride that soldiers and military leaders feel—the speaker can
poem argues, that can do no more to improve the world than only hear the terrible guns that “disturbed the hour.”
can the dead in their coffins. Thus, the poem looks further and further back in time, hearing
The first line of the poem says it all: “That night your great guns, the guns’ “readiness to avenge” echoing through all these time
unawares.” The phrase “great guns” suggests the mightiness of periods. Human history is suffused with the madness of war,
the military weapons, which are so powerful that they shake and that madness won’t end anytime soon.
the dead wake. The dead sit up in their coffins thinking it’s
“Judgment-day”—when God will determine who goes to Where this theme appears in the poem:
Heaven—but it’s actually just “gunnery practice.” God’s • Lines 1-36
dismissal of the guns implies that, for all their bluster and noise,
they have nothing to do with what’s right and wrong. In fact,
God says that it’s a good thing it isn’t “Judgment RELIGIOUS DOUBT
hour”—because if it were, a lot of the people firing those guns The poem’s satirical depiction of God suggests that
would be sent to Hell. the speaker has a complicated relationship with
Furthermore, the personification of “great guns” as “unawares” religion. Although the speaker uses God as an interlocutor (i.e.,
treats the guns as beings that aren’t conscious of what they’re a second speaker) to help make sense of the human world, the
doing. The guns are just another tool of senseless war, where speaker also holds God at a distance, depicting him ironically
ironically.
there’s no guarantee that they will be used for good. The word Perhaps God is nothing more than a helpful fiction, the poem
“unawares” also implies that those firing these guns don’t suggests, one that people can use to help make sense of life. Or,
understand the reach their actions will have, which, in turn, perhaps the speaker is trying to make sense of how God could
underscores how foolish these weapons are in the first place. create such a violent world. However one interprets the poem,
That is, humanity has created greater and greater weapons of it’s clear the speaker casts doubt on the promises of religion.
destruction without fully grasping the consequences. How can a society call itself Christian, the poem implicitly asks,
It’s almost as if countries and militaries are possessed by a kind while also developing weapons that lead to such horror and
of madness. This isn’t a temporary madness, either, but rather is destruction?
presented as a longstanding historical fact. God describes The poem’s satirical, skeptical attitude towards God comes
national leaders as “Mad as hatters.” This is because they across in God’s quoted speech. Rather than mimicking how
continue making war rather than working for a better world. God sounds in, say, the King James Bible, the poem gives God a
And although technology has grown more powerful, this rather glib tone: “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when / I blow the
madness has been around for humanity’s entire history. “The trumpet.” This reference to “blow[ing] the trumpet” is an
world is as it used to be,” says God—meaning that the firing allusion to the apocalypse. By having God laugh at human
guns are just part of society chugging along as it always has. suffering and the apocalypse, the poem suggests that God
Developing this idea, the poem takes a wide view of human doesn’t take these things too seriously. He has a pretty cynical
history in its second half. The poem looks both to humanity’s attitude towards the world he created. It also hints that God
future and distant past in order to emphasize how pervasive may not be as powerful as religion makes him out to be. His
war has been throughout the ages. One of the dead people cynicism seems to stem from the fact that he can’t do anything
woken by the gunfire wonders if “the world” will ever be to stop humans from waging war.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 2

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Having God speak in a poem is always a bold choice. It draws to suffer.
attention to the artificiality of the poem—after all, God doesn’t The reactions of the animals in the churchyard offer a stark
usually speak to people in their everyday lives. In fact, the contrast to the powerful “great guns” that disturb them. The
poem’s depiction of God seems to be hinting that he is a speaker describes the reactions of meek and gentle animals:
fictional entity. When God references “blow[ing] the trumpet,” “The mouse let fall the altar-crumb / The worms drew back into
he immediately follows it up with the qualification: “if indeed / I the mounds.” These images suggest that as the powerful
ever do.” In other words, God’s not sure that he’ll ever put an prepare for war, the humble suffer. Similarly, the guns also wake
end to worldly suffering. the dead; they “Shook all our coffins as we lay.” In a word,
This uncertainty suggests that God’s not sure what his plan for everyone is terrified.
the world is. Yet it also pushes the reader to wonder if there God acknowledges the unfortunate situation of the meek,
might not be a God at all. In other words, this moment can be putting a fine point on it: “you who are helpless in such matters.”
read as a cheeky nod to God’s own fictional nature. That is, the In other words, not only do acts of war terrify ordinary people,
character called “God” in this poem acknowledges that he but there’s also nothing they can do; war will go on no matter
might not even be real. In that case, there will be no reckoning what. God goes on to say, “you are men, / And rest eternal
on Judgment day, and the world will continue on its violent path sorely need.” The world is tiring, draining, it wears ordinary
forever. people down. However, the only thing that would give people
All this leads to a sense that Christianity’s hopes and ethics may rest is if God brought about Judgment Day, ending the world as
be futile, both on a national and an individual level. It doesn’t we know it. Yet—as noted in the previous theme—there seems
cause countries to stop fighting, and it doesn’t help people cope to be little hope of him doing that. Barring such action, the
with war. In reference to national leaders, God says, “They do helplessness of individuals may be a permanent plight.
no more for Christés sake / Than you who are helpless in such So, the poem ends on a rather bleak note for individuals: with
matters.” In other words, the leaders of supposedly Christian no help forthcoming from the powerful or even God, they are
nations do little to actually advance the morals of Christianity. left to the terrible, unpredictable violence of modern war.
In fact, if it were Judgment day, those leaders would have to
“scour / Hell’s floor for so much threatening.” So much for
Where this theme appears in the poem:
Christianity’s ability to bring out the good in people, the poem
seems to say. • Lines 5-9
• Line 16
As for regular people, Parson Thirdly (a dead clergyman) puts it
• Lines 22-24
like this: “Instead of preaching forty year […] I wish I had stuck
• Lines 25-32
to pipes and beer.” Even in this direct conversation with God,
the Parson regrets devoting his life to religion. He wishes he’d
spend his life enjoying himself instead. Either way, he’d have
ended up here—lying in the ground, terrified by gunfire. Thus, LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
the poem has a bleak outlook on the possibilities of Christianity,
expressing little hope that God is real—or that, if he is, he has LINES 1-5
any power to save humanity. That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
Where this theme appears in the poem: And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day
• Lines 4-5
And sat upright.
• Line 7
• Lines 9-32 The first sentence of "Channel Firing" spans the entire first
stanza and flows into the second. It sets up the poem's main
juxtaposition and its satirical tone. As warships practice firing
THE HELPLESSNESS OF INDIVIDUALS their massive cannons out at sea, the noise travels inland to a
As the poem depicts the fright of both animals and country church. The noise is so loud that it shatters the church
the human dead, the poem captures the helplessness windows and literally wakes the dead, who sit bolt upright,
of individuals in the face of war. In contrast to wealthy nations thinking it is "Judgment-day"—i.e, the Apocalypse.
that build “great guns,” the dead and the churchyard animals This dr
dramatic
amatic iron
ironyy (the dead's misunderstanding about the
are meek, humble creatures. They live in a quaint old graveyard; noise) kicks off the poem by juxtaposing the violent reality of
technology doesn’t benefit them. Their fright reflects the fate the world with Christian expectations. That is, whereas the
of all individuals in the modern world, which, according to the Christian dead think God has finally decided to intervene in
poem at least, is to be ignored by the powerful and condemned

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 3

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
worldly affairs, in reality things are the same as always. Nations guns the startled mouse lets the crumb drop. Outside, worms
are preparing for war. that have poked their heads of the dirt are so startled by the
The first line of the poem says a great deal about the world the vibration that they inch back underground. On other hand, the
dead wake up to: "That night your great guns, unawares." This "glebe cow"—the cow kept on church property—seems
"your" is striking. Because this poem is spoken by dead people, relatively unperturbed. She merely drools.
this "your" refers to the living. Specifically, it singles out the This catalog of reactions does two things. First, it captures the
people who are responsible for testing these "great guns" out helplessness of all these critters. They are rightly scared by the
at sea: national and military leaders. More generally, however, it sound of war. Second, it suggests that the animals are relatively
seems to rope in anyone who's reading the poem. That is, the ignorant as to what they should do in the face of war. This is
"your" can be read as directly addressing the reader. This best exemplified by the drooling cow. If this were a real
feeling that the poem may or may not be addressing the reader bombing, the cow would be woefully unprepared as it stood
forces the reader to think about where they stand in relation to there. So these animals are not only meek and helpless, but
the issues the poem raises. Each person that reads the poem is they are also to a certain extent clueless about the human
forced to consider how they feel about war, technology, and affairs happening around them.
religion. Assonance lends unity to this sentence:
The phrase "great guns" captures how modern countries feel
about technology. Advances in weaponry is seen as positive. Arose the how
owl of wakened hou ounds:
The guns (the giant artillery cannons on warships) are "great" The mou
ouse let faall the altar-crumb,
not only in the sense that they are powerful, but that they are The worms drewew back into o the mou
ounds,
supposedly glorious. Yet the speaker immediately qualifies this The glebe cow
ow droo ooled.
phrase with the word "unawares." The adjective personifies the
guns, suggesting that they—like people—can be unaware of the The /ow/, /ah/ and /oo/ sounds pervading the stanza link all the
consequences of their own actions. The guns (and by extension animals together, capturing how they share a sense of
those who fire them) don't realize that they've awoken the helplessness.
dead. So, while these guns may be "great," they're also kind of
The poem continues to be written in quatr
quatrains
ains rh
rhymed
ymed ABAB.
like brutes who make a lot of clumsy noise.
The meter
meter, iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter (four feet in a da-DUM
DUM rhythm),
The first stanza establishes the form the poem will follow continues as well. The meter and rhyme help order these
throughout. The first stanza is a quatr
quatrain
ain (a four-line stanza) images and set the scene. The rhymed quatrains, often
that follows the rh
rhyme
yme scheme ABAB. Metrically
Metrically, every line associated with folk songs, are thus well-suited to the country
follows iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter, or four feet in a da-DUM
DUM rhythm. scene described in this stanza.
The third line exemplifies this meter well:
LINES 9-12
And brok
brokee | the chan
chan- | cel win
win- | dow-squares
squares, Till God called, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Hardy often uses forms like this, which is a pretty traditional Just as before you went below;
one and has often been associated with songs and folk stories. The world is as it used to be:
Such quatrains are good for capturing the speech and rhythms In the next sentence, the poem really ramps up its satirical
of everyday people—something the poem is clearly interested edge. Whereas in the first stanza, the poem took the
in, as all the dead seem to be regular country folk. imaginative liberty and poetic leap of having the dead speak,
LINES 5-9 now the poem goes even further: God responds to the dead.
More specifically, God chimes in to let the dead know that it's
While drearisome not the apocalypse after all. It's only warships practicing "out at
Arose the howl of wakened hounds: sea."
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds, This whole situation is bleakly humorous. It's a
The glebe cow drooled. misunderstanding, a gag, which is captured by the tone
tone, form,
and diction of God's language. Just as the previous rhrhymed
ymed
In the next sentence, the poem describes the reactions of the quatr
quatrains
ains of iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter, with their images of animal life
local animals to the firing of the "great guns." Dogs wake up and a country church, captured the feel of rural life, so too does
with a "drearisome," or upsetting, "howl." Meanwhile, a mouse God's speech have a kind of everyday quality to it. In English,
has crawled up onto the altar in the church and picked up a religious language and the voice of God is often associated with
crumb, perhaps—amusingly—a piece of the Eucharist (the the sound of the King James Bible. This translation was
bread used in the ritual of communion). Yet at the sound of the

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 4

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
completed at the beginning of the 17th century and has a very who made hats) would use mercury in the production of hats,
grand, archaic sound to it. Meanwhile, in Hardy's poem, God eventually leading to mercury poisoning, which causes people
sounds the opposite: ordinary, contemporary, matter-of-fact. to go mad (i.e., insane). So, on a contextual level, this phrase
This quality is achieved right from the get-go with God's abrupt draws out how technology (in this case, the chemicals used in
"No." Nothing fancy, a clipped and unpretentious response to the hat production) can be a harmful thing, making the world
the confused dead. Because each line is only four stresses long, more crazy, rather than less.
God's phrases are short rather than drawn out. Additionally, On a tonal level, the use of cliché further accentuates the
the consistent rhyme added on top of these short phrases everyday quality of God's speech. Rather than employing
creates a pithy, almost tongue-in-cheek feel to these lines. eloquent, poetic, and original language, God just recycles old
There's another reason that the grandness and power of God human sayings. Although God is supposed to be the creator of
seems downplayed in these lines. This is that God seems to the universe, his language suggests he has dwindled in power.
have been sort of upstaged here. He is supposed to cause Rather than using creative language, God is derivative, limited.
Judgment Day, but instead human beings have created The poem's depiction of God thus suggests a severe doubt in
weapons so powerful they can be mistaken for God's own his power—perhaps even doubt in his existence.
wrath. In other words, human technology seems to knock God Asserting the madness of "nations," God says, "They do no
down a peg. All God can do is call out, No, no, false alarm. Rather more for Christés sake / Than you who are helpless in such
than being an all-powerful creator and destroyer, God comes matters." "Christés" is just an archaic and poetic (even comically
across more as a nagging stage manager who barely has the poetic) way of referring to Jesus Christ. In other words, God is
whole production under control. saying that the powerful people of world do nothing promote
These lines also establish the poem's concern for the Christian values, while common people—even if they wanted to
relationship between modern warfare and the history of promote such values—are powerless to do so. In God's opinion,
violence: Christianity has failed to transform the world. In the Old
Testament, the first part of the bible, God often violently
It’s gunnery practice out at sea punished people for failing to adhere to religious values. Yet
Just as before you went below; here there's a sense that such punishment would be futile and
The world is as it used to be: redundant. After all, humans themselves have only grown more
violent. Every decade, a more violent war than the last breaks
When these dead people were still alive, militaries also out. In a way, it's as if humans are already punishing themselves.
practiced firing their weapons out at sea. So, in other words, LINES 17-20
although modernity has enabled weapons to become louder
and more powerful, nothing has fundamentally changed. “That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
LINES 13-16 For if it were they’d have to scour
“All nations striving strong to make Hell’s floor for so much threatening....
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters In the fifth stanza, God continues a cynical line of thought
They do no more for Christés sake about the human world. Speaking about the leaders of
Than you who are helpless in such matters. European nations, God says that it's a good thing that it's not
In this section, God gets pretty cynical. Following the colon in the apocalypse. According to the bible, during the apocalypse,
line 12, he elaborates on how "The world is as it used to be." God will separate the sinners from the virtuous and send the
The world is the same because countries are still trying to find sinners to hell. Since national leaders have been creating war
ways make to deadlier weapons, "striving strong to make / Red and doing nothing to promote Christian values, they would go
war yet redder." This is a use of polyptoton
polyptoton, where "Red" is to Hell. As such, they're lucky that it's not the apocalypse after
repeated in two different forms to heighten its intensity. In all.
turn, "Red" is also an example of synecdoche
synecdoche, in which "Red" God uses some vivid language to express this point. First, God
stands in for blood (since it's the color of blood), which in turn says, "That this is not the judgment-hour / For some of them's a
stands in for the violence of war. Here, God poetically blessed thing." The phrase "blessed thing" means "lucky" or
emphasizes two points. One, that violence has always been a "fortunate." Yet it's ironic that God uses this phrase, because
part of human history. Two, that throughout history humans God is the one that grants actual blessings. Here, though, God
have worked to become better at killing. acts like this "blessed thing" is an accident. National leaders
Next, God employs a cliché to cynically comment on this haven't been blessed, they're just lucky that God hasn't ended
history, saying that "nations" are "Mad as hatters." This the world.
idiomatic phrase refers to a historical reality. Hatters (people Then, God says, "For if it were [Judgment Day] they'd have to

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 5

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
scour / Hell's floor for so much threatening..." The word "scour" God's also laughing at what he's about to say: "It will be warmer
means to clean a surface by scrubbing it with a harsh soap or when / I blow the trumpet." Now God seems to be laughing at
sponge. God imagines the ultimate damnation as having to the prospect of the apocalypse, "blow[ing] the trumpet" and
clean the floors in Hell. In comparison to the horrific tortures sending the world up in flames. Of course, he drastically
that Christianity has traditionally associated with Hell, this one understates these flames, saying the world will be "warmer."
is comically tame. At the same time, it again represents a The parenthetical that follows this statement is strange and
colloquial and everyday use of language. It's the kind of thing a even more disappointing:
parent in rural England might threaten their misbehaving child
with. God seems less like the creator of the universe and more I blow the trumpet (if indeed
like some mildly influential member of the local community. I ever do; for you are men,
The poem continues in its rh rhymed
ymed quatr
quatrains
ains of iambic And rest eternal sorely need).
tetr
tetrameter
ameter (four feet in a da-DUM
DUM rhythm). It employs a
notable rhyme between lines 18 and 20: "bleesseed thinging" with God employs aporia here, expressing doubt that he'll ever
"threa
eateening
ing." The word "blessed" should be pronounced with "blow the trumpet."
two syllables. As a result, it has the same stress pattern and This doubt can be read on several levels. For one, it suggests
vowel sounds (/e/ and /ee/) as "threatening": that God may never choose to end human suffering and rather
let it continue forever—perhaps out of indifference. Or, God
a bless | ed thing may be hinting that he doesn't even have the power to end the
world, that he's not as powerful as humans thought. Finally, this
And: can be read as doubt in God's existence in general—that the
"God" depicted here is only a fictional character with no real
much threa | tening
ing power besides a bad attitude.
God says that humans "rest eternal sorely need." In other
Multi-syllable rhymes have a very pronounced effect on poems, words, regular people sure would appreciate the apocalypse,
especially in relatively short lines. Here, it helps emphasize the because they would finally get a reprieve from all the suffering
point the speaker is making (that national leaders will go to of the world. So, God knows that people need to be helped, but
Hell) while accentuating the meter and the comic energy of he's in no hurry to help them. This sentiment ends God's
God's diction
diction. It helps signal to the reader that this is a bleakly monologue
monologue. No assurances, no sense of sympathy beyond a
funny caricature of God. laughing acknowledgment of human suffering. Imagine being
woken from the slumber of death only to find the world has
LINES 21-24
gotten more violent and that God is the equivalent of a cynical
“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when middle manager. A bitter experience indeed.
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men, LINES 25-28
And rest eternal sorely need).” So down we lay again. “I wonder,
The sixth stanza is God's most cynical. It's where he drops all Will the world ever saner be,”
pretenses of being serious, eloquent, and all powerful. Instead, Said one, “than when He sent us under
he merely laughs at the plight of humans: "Ha, ha." This is a In our indifferent century!”
grotesque moment. For one, the onomatopoeia "Ha, ha" is Now that God has finished explaining the situation to them, the
rarely used in poems, or even in fiction, because it has an dead lie back down in their coffins. Before they go back to
awkward quality to it. Something is lost when people try to sleep, or whatever it is corpses do as they lie in the ground, the
write down the sound of laughter, especially amid language that dead commiserate. They reevaluate their existences in light of
is otherwise very literary and composed. It comes off as what God has said.
artificial.
First off, one of them thinks about the violence of the world:
Here, though, that effect is intended. It captures the experience
of hearing God laugh. After all, for all the positive qualities [...] "I wonder,
Christianity attributes to God, humor usually isn't one of them. Will the world ever saner be,"
One possible reason for this is that God created the world and Said one, "than when He sent us under
cares for everything in it—so, what is there for him to laugh at? In our indifferent century!"
Here, though, he's laughing at sending people to Hell! If there
ever was a good example of the phrase Never meet your heroes, In other words, Will people ever see the light? Or will the world
this would be it. always be as violent as it was when we died, way back then? The

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 6

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
state of the world seems to imply an answer to this question: spent life enjoying himself: hanging out in the local pub smoking
No. Things only get crazier. World War I, which was just about tobacco and drinking beer. Presumably, the Parson joined the
to break out when this poem was written, would see the use of church because he believed in Christian values and an afterlife.
poisonous mustard gas, trench warfare, and deadly airplane Yet now that he's actually heard from God, he thinks that such a
battles. life was a waste. It's like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when it
One word in particular diagnoses the source of this insanity: turns out the "Wizard" is actually just a "man behind the
"indifferent." That is, national leaders are willing to let countless curtain" with no actual magical powers.
civilians and young soldiers die because these leaders are The meter of lines 30 and 32 capture the gist of the Parson's
"indifferent" to their deaths. They just don't care. Of course, feelings. Line 30 follows a perfect iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter (four feet
indifference is not a very a Christian attitude. Christians are in a da-DUM
DUM rhythm):
supposed to feel sympathy and pity for other people's suffering,
to provide charity and do good deeds. Again, the poem leaves “Instead
stead | off prea
prea- | ching for
for- | ty year
ear,”
the reader with a pretty bleak conclusion: humanity isn't
getting more ethical any time soon, and Christianity isn't going The regular meter captures the drudgery of preaching for forty
to do a whole lot to make it happen. years without a break. Meanwhile, line 32 adds a slight
This line also emphasizes the wide scope of the poem. Although variation:
the poem on one hand depicts humble, common people, on the
other hand it suggests the vastness of the history; these “I wish | I had stuck | to pipes | and beer
beer.”
humble people died over a century ago. So while it provides a
pretty cynical forecast for the immediate future, the poem also It employs an anapest (da-da-DUMDUM) in its second foot, adding a
asks the reader to think about human affairs on a larger scale: little energy to the line's meter, almost as if it's a traditional
centuries. drinking song, a folk song celebrating getting drunk at the pub.
Additionally, the phrase "forty year" (i.e., forty years) is a subtle
LINES 29-32
colloquialism
colloquialism. By dropping the /s/ at the end of "years," the
And many a skeleton shook his head. poem captures a particular English country dialect. Hardy's
“Instead of preaching forty year,” early career was devoted to writing novels that often included
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, rural characters. So, this phrase can be seen as a deliberate
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.” moment of true-to-life speech, making these grumpy skeleton
In the second-to-last stanza, the poem gets more specific about seems real, if also humorous.
the dead. First it says, "many a skeleton shook his head." For
one, this description suggests that all the dead people who have LINES 33-36
been talking are skeletons. They've been dead a long time. Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Furthermore, a skeleton shaking its head is both a spooky Roaring their readiness to avenge,
image and a cartoonish one. As far inland as Stourton Tower,
The image suggests the medieval genre of visual called danse And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
macabr
macabree, or "dance of death," which depicts skeletons dancing The previous stanza represented an ordinary person's
on their way to the grave. Such artworks are meant to individual feelings about Christianity and world events. It
represent the universality of death. In "Channel Firing," these represented these things in terms of one person's life. This final
moving skeletons recall this old tradition of imagery while also stanza, however, zooms out drastically, propelling the reader
modifying it. While in the traditional danse macabre skeletons through time and space.
have an unsettling joyfulness or energy, here they are weary In lines 35 and 36, the poem alludes to three distinct historical
and disappointed. They all lie around in their coffins shaking or fictitious places. Stourton Tower, also known as King Alfred's
their heads, going tsk tsk at the world. Medieval artists lived a Tower, is in the county of Somerset in southern England. It was
society that fervently believed in God; they represented death built in the 1700s to commemorate the end of the Seven Years'
as a dynamic force in a world that God would eventually War with France. Camelot was the fictitious capital in medieval
destroy. Here, however, death seems almost like an accident, King Arthur legends. The Arthurian romances, or adventure
just one more example of the brutality of a world that has stories, are most likely fictions. Even so, people have often tried
spiraled out of God's control. to find a real basis for the legends and have suggested possible
One skeleton seems to have come to similar conclusion. This is locations all over England for a real Camelot—including in the
Parson Thirdly, a dead country priest, a character invented by south of England. Finally, Stonehenge is the famous neolithic
the poem. After listening to God, the Parson regrets joining the stone monument in Wiltshire, another county in South England.
clergy and devoting his life to God. Instead, he wishes he had It was probably constructed between 3000 and 2000 BCE.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 7

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Two things immediately stand out, then, about this succession
of places. First, these places are all clustered in the South, near SYMBOLS
the English Channel but still pretty far inland. This general area
was also where Hardy set all of his novels. This creates a feeling GREAT GUNS
of connection to this geographic area, both its history and its
The most prominent symbol in the poem is the "great
realities of daily life. Furthermore, the English Channel is
guns," the powerful artillery canons on warships. The
England's closest sea route to mainland Europe, and thus
guns symbolize how modern technology has led to increasingly
represents England's military entanglements with its European
brutal and unthinking forms of war. The adjective "great" is
neighbors. In other words, those who live in this area of
thus ironic
ironic: although the guns are "great" in the sense of
England are at the forefront of England's life as a military
powerful, they are not "great" for humankind; they're terrible.
power. This is exemplified by the events of the poem, in which
the inhabitants of this area can hear the navy preparing for war. The poem immediately shows why the guns aren't great. The
noise alone from them is enough to shatter church windows,
The second thing that stands out here is that this list of places
startle all the country animals, and wake the dead. While
extends backwards in time. Stourton Tower was built in the
national leaders may argue that war is necessary, it clearly only
1700s, Camelot was a fictitious medieval city that first
has detrimental effects on the lives of everyday people. Even
appeared in writing in the 1100s, and Stonehenge was built
God, who has an omniscient view of the world, thinks the guns
several thousand years ago. So, as the "roaring" guns' sound
are awful, and that those who use them are "Mad as hatters."
extends further inland, it also seems to pierce through time.
This creates the impression that the guns are roaring through Although such powerful guns are made possible by modern
history. Put another way, human history has always been filled advances in technology, at the same time they represent an
with the sound of violence. The speaker says "the guns age-old trend: war and the search for more powerful forms of
disturbed the hour," and there's a sense in which this is an violence. In the last stanza, the sounds of the guns goes
eternal hour. As if this feeling of being startled awake in the "roaring" not only deep into England, but also deep into history,
middle of the night by the sounds of violence is a ceaseless fact reaching even to Stonehenge, which was built several thousand
of human existence. The description of Stonehenge as "starlit" years ago. In other words, "great guns" represent the violence
captures this eternal fact, as the stars hanging in the sky that has pervaded human history.
symbolize the undying facts of existence.
The speaker also personifies the guns once again: Where this symbol appears in the poem:
• Line 1: “great guns”
Again the guns disturbed the hour, • Line 10: “gunnery practice”
Roaring their readiness to avenge, • Line 33: “the guns”

In the first stanza, the guns acted "unawares"; now, they have a
"readiness to avenge." Now they have a distinct sense of THE TRUMPET
purpose, to seek revenge. What are they seeking revenge for? The trumpet alludes to the seven trumpets of the
That's left purposely unanswered. It's whatever the excuse of apocalypse, heralding "Judgement-day," when God
war this time is. By leaving this implicit question unanswered, decides who gets into Heaven and who goes to Hell. More
then, the poem suggest that this need to "avenge" is an illusion broadly, the trumpet in the poem symbolizes the Christian
concocted by the those in power. belief in God's omnipotence, or unlimited power over the
Line 34 uses metrical stress to highlight the violence of the world. Implicit in this belief, then, is that no human violence can
guns: come close to what God is capable of—and which humans will
witness during the apocalypse.
Roar
Roaring | their read
read- | iness to | avvenge
enge, Of course, the poem purposefully treats this symbol ironically
ironically.
It's definitively not the apocalypse in the poem, but only
The speaker uses a trochee (DUMDUM-da) instead of an iamb in this "gunnery practice." God himself chimes in and confirms that it's
first foot
foot. By leading with a stressed syllable, the poem captures not the apocalypse. He even casts doubt on whether such a day
the forceful violence of the guns. A threat of impending war will ever come (perhaps because he doesn't have as much
that, at the end of the poem, seems like it will never go away. power as humans think). It's easy to begin thinking, then, that if
there ever is an end of the world, it won't be brought on by
God, but by humans.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 8

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
there may also be something contrived about the very notion of
Where this symbol appears in the poem:
"great guns." As the poem will go on to show, these guns are not
• Line 22: “the trumpet” so great; they're brute and foolish instruments of destruction.
The /g/ sound reappears in the third stanza in "gglebe cow,"
"G
God," and "ggunnery." Here, the /g/ triangulates three important
STARS
elements in the poem. First, the "glebe cow," a parish cow,
The poem ends on the image of "starlit Stonehenge." represents the helplessness and limited knowledge of
The stars in this image can be read as symbolizing individuals. "God," of course, plays an important role in the
eternity. More specifically, they capture the place of violence poem, revealing himself to be disappointingly limited and
throughout human history. As "the guns disturbed the hour, / cynical, not the all-powerful benevolent deity he is imagined to
Roaring their readiness to avenge," the reader gets the sense be. And "gunnery" again reiterates the noise of the weapons.
that isn't a temporary phenomenon. The "hour" that the guns This trio of individuals–God–guns will thematically guide the
disturb figuratively represents all those moments throughout poem.
history when human life has been disrupted by violence. Read
In the last stanza, two instances of alliteration end the poem on
this way, the "disturbed [...] hour" is as permanent as the stars.
a bleakly lyrical note. First, the /r/ sound repeats in "R
Roaring"
As the sound of the guns passes over Stourton Tower (built in and "rreadiness." The /r/ captures the "Roaring" sound of guns,
the 1700s) to Camelot (a city first written about in the 1100s) once more returning the poem's focus to the loud guns. Then,
and finally to Stonehenge (built in 3000 to 2000 BCE), the /s/ and /t/ sounds repeat in "St Stourton Tower" and "st
starlit
poem seems to travel back in time. As it finally halts at the St
Stonehenge." These sounds add some graceful musicality to the
stones of Stonehenge, the stars hanging on the blackness of end of the poem. Whereas the middle stanzas have been ironic,
night seem to sketch out over a kind of void; the endlessness of lively, and bitter, this final stanza represents an abrupt change
time. If God can't be expected to intervene in human affairs of tone. The poem grows much more serious and cosmic. The
(such as by bringing about the end of the world) then humanity beauty of the phrase "starlit Stonehenge" has a kind of eternal
is faced with a potentially infinite future. If modern technology mournfulness to it, as the reader considers how violence has
continues to advance, and humans keep waging war, then "Red played such a prominent role throughout human existence. The
war" will continue to grow "yet redder" for all eternity. noticeable alliteration helps emphasize this.

Where this symbol appears in the poem: Where Alliter

Alliteration
ation appears in the poem:
• Line 36: “starlit” • Line 1: “great,” “guns”
• Line 4: “We,” “was”
• Line 5: “While”
POETIC DEVICES • Line 6: “howl,” “wakened,” “hounds”
• Line 8: “worms”
ALLITERATION • Line 9: “glebe,” “cow,” “God,” “called”
• Line 10: “gunnery”
Although "Channel Firing" uses alliter
alliteration
ation throughout, the
• Line 11: “before,” “went,” “below”
device isn't always super noticeable. Sometimes, this is because
• Line 12: “world,” “be”
repeating sounds are spread out subtly across the whole
• Line 13: “striving,” “strong,” “make”
stanza, as with "Wh
While," "w wakened," and "w worms," in stanza 2, or • Line 14: “Red,” “redder,” “Mad”
"m
make," "M
Mad," and "m more" in stanza 4. Other times, sounds • Line 15: “more”
repeat across quieter words that don't stand out too much, • Line 16: “who,” “helpless,” “matters”
such as the /th/ sound in stanza 5 (both voiced and unvoiced), in • Line 17: “That,” “this,” “the”
words like "Th
That," "th
this" and "th
thing." • Line 18: “them’s,” “thing”
There are some moments, however, where alliteration does • Line 19: “they’d”
make more of an impression, offering poetic emphasis on • Line 20: “floor for,” “threatening”
important images and phrases. For instance, the poem begins • Line 21: “Ha,” “ha,” “warmer,” “when”
with alliteration on the important phrase "ggreat guns." The /g/ • Line 22: “if,” “indeed”
alliteration draws attention to the guns, whose noise pervades • Line 25: “we,” “wonder”
the poem and is the whole reason for the conversation • Line 26: “Will,” “world,” “saner”
between God and the dead. Additionally, the alliteration adds a • Line 27: “Said,” “one,” “when,” “sent,” “us,” “under”
touch of iron
ironyy. This is partly due to the artificiality of • Line 28: “In,” “indifferent,” “century”
alliteration—it's not how people normally talk—signaling that • Line 29: “his head”

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 9

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com

• Line 30: “preaching” • Line 4: “was,” “Judgment,” “day”

• Line 31: “Parson” • Line 5: “upright,” “drearisome”
• Line 32: “pipes” • Line 6: “howl,” “hounds”
• Line 34: “Roaring,” “readiness” • Line 7: “mouse,” “fall,” “altar,” “crumb”
• Line 35: “Stourton,” “Tower” • Line 8: “drew,” “into,” “mounds”
• Line 36: “starlit,” “Stonehenge” • Line 9: “cow,” “God,” “called,” “No”
• Line 10: “sea”
ASSONANCE • Line 11: “below”
• Line 12: “used to,” “be”
The use of assonance in "Channel Firing" is pretty quiet. It may
• Line 13: “nations,” “make”
be interesting to consider that Hardy started out his writing
• Line 14: “Red,” “yet,” “redder,” “Mad,” “as,” “hatters”
career primarily as a novelist, and that some of this early
• Line 15: “They,” “more,” “for,” “sake”
emphasis on prose may come through in his poetry as well.
• Line 16: “you,” “who,” “matters”
Prose also downplays assonance in favor other qualities like • Line 17: “this,” “is,” “hour”
cadence and varied syntax
syntax. That's not to say that assonance is • Line 18: “some,” “of,” “them’s,” “blessed,” “thing”
absent from the poem; far from it. Rather, assonance lurks in • Line 19: “if it,” “scour”
the background, a soft guiding structure for the poem's sound. • Line 20: “floor,” “for,” “threatening”
Some of the most noticeable uses of assonance dovetail with • Line 21: “when”
the poem's use of rhyme. For instance, stanza two repeats the • Line 22: “if,” “indeed”
/ow/ sound in the words "howowl" and "mou
ouse," as well as the • Line 23: “do,” “you,” “men”
rhyme words "hou ounds" and "mou
ounds." Because the rhyme • Line 24: “rest,” “sorely,” “need”
words get a lot of emphasis, these other assonant words get an • Line 25: “again,” “wonder”
emphatic boost as well. All these words describe the reaction of • Line 26: “be”
various critters to the sound of guns. Overall, then, these • Line 27: “Said,” “when,” “sent,” “us,” “under”
emphasized /ow/ words craft an impression of the natural • Line 28: “In,” “indifferent,” “century”
world that suffuses the churchyard. • Line 29: “many,” “skeleton,” “head”
• Line 30: “Instead,” “preaching,” “forty,” “year”
A similar effect happens in the second-to-last stanza:
• Line 31: “said”
• Line 32: “I,” “I,” “pipes,” “beer”
And maany a skeeleton shook his hea
head.
• Line 34: “readiness,” “avenge”
“Instea
ead of prea
eaching forty yea
ear,”

Here, the end word "heaead" draws attention to the short /eh/
CONSONANCE
sound, which also appears in "maany," "skeeleton," and "Instea
ead." Consonance pervades "Channel Firing." It provides texture and
Then, the long /ee/ sound appears in "preaeaching" and the end unity to the poem, while not making the language overly lyrical.
word "yea
ear." These sounds draw attention to this comic and sad Because the poem has such a heavy dose of irony and black
moment. It's comic because the images of skeletons shaking humor, it mostly avoids the beautiful vowel sounds of
their heads undermines the spookiness of skeletons, instead assonance in favor of the more toned-down cohesion of
making them seem like everyday people. And it's sad because consonants.
the skeletons are shaking their heads at God, who's really For instance, the first two lines employ quiet consonance to
disappointed them. emphasize the speaker's formal control of language:
Other moments are much quieter, like the phrase "Go od caalled"
in line 9, "iif indeed" in line 22, and "Hell's floo
oor fo
or," in line 20. Thatt nightt your grreatt guns
ns, unawarress,
These moments of assonance don't necessarily have been Shookk allll our coffins as we lay,
thematic meanings. Rather, they help keep the language lively
and varied. They are part of the structure and unity of the Apart from the alliter
alliteration
ation of "ggreat guns," which has a
poem. somewhat ironic effect, the rest of the assonance creates a kind
of background tension, a taut, high-strung structure that
Where Assonance appears in the poem: mirrors the disturbance the guns create.
Later in the poem, consonance helps speed the language up, as
• Line 1: “guns,” “unawares”
the dead begin to reconsider their place in the world:
• Line 2: “all,” “coffins,” “lay”
• Line 3: “squares”
So down
n we lay again
n. “I wond
nder,

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 10

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Willll the world
rld everr san
nerr be,”
Said
d onone, “thann wh
when n He sen nt uss und
nderr • Line 25: “down,” “we,” “again,” “wonder”
In
n ourr ind
ndifferrennt cen
nturry!” • Line 26: “Will,” “world,” “ever,” “saner”
• Line 27: “Said,” “one,” “than,” “when,” “sent,” “us,” “under”
Here, /w/, /n/, /d/, /l/, /r/, and /s/ sounds repeat throughout the • Line 28: “In,” “our,” “indifferent,” “century”
stanza, interlocking like puzzle pieces. It's as if the dead are • Line 29: “And,” “many,” “skeleton,” “shook,” “his,” “head”
putting everything together, coming to a realization about the • Line 30: “preaching,” “forty,” “year”
world. They are seeing that both God and human leaders are • Line 31: “neighbour,” “Parson,” “Thirdly,” “said”
"indifferent." • Line 32: “stuck,” “to,” “pipes”
• Line 33: “Again,” “guns,” “disturbed,” “hour”
A similar effect occurs in the next stanza, though slightly more
• Line 34: “Roaring,” “their,” “readiness”
muted:
• Line 35: “far,” “Stourton,” “Tower”
• Line 36: “And,” “Camelot,” “and,” “starlit,” “Stonehenge”
And
nd man ny a sk
skeleton
n shookk his head d.
“Ins
nsteadd of pr
preaching forrty yearr,”
My neighbourr Pars rson
n Third
rdly saidd,
PERSONIFICATION
“I wish I had
d st
stuck to pip
pess and
nd beer.” At the beginning and end of the poem, the speaker personifies
the "great guns." In line 1, the speaker describes them as
As /n/, /k/, /p/, /d/, /h/, /r/, /s/, and /t/ sounds trickle down the "unawares"—that is, the guns are like people who don't
stanza, they capture how the skeletons keep thinking about understand the consequences of their own actions. And in lines
existence, expanding on the conclusions of the previous stanza. 33-34, "the guns disturbed the hour, / Roaring their readiness
One of them—Parson Thirdly—even says he now wishes he to avenge." Here, the guns are seen as more malicious, calling
hadn't devoted his life to God. He wishes he'd "stuck to pipes out their desire to seek revenge for something.
and beer." In the first instance of personification, the word "unawares"
As these examples show, consonance adds a subtle dynamic draws attention to the iron
ironyy of the phrase "great guns." On its
structure to the stanzas of the poem, helping them capture this own, "great guns" suggests not only power but also goodness
strange scene of guns, skeletons, and God. or glory. It might make readers feel patriotically towards war.
However, personifying the guns adds a blackly humorous
Where Consonance appears in the poem: dimension to them, and suggesting that they are
"unawares"—that they don't know what they're doing—totally
• Line 1: “That,” “night,” “your,” “great,” “guns,” “unawares” undercuts any feeling of patriotism.
• Line 2: “Shook,” “all,” “coffins,” “lay”
At the end of the poem, the black humor of the first line has
• Line 3: “broke,” “chancel,” “window,” “squares”
disappeared. Now the guns seem to know what they're doing.
• Line 4: “We,” “thought,” “was,” “the”
They are "read[y] to avenge." That is, the terrible noise they're
• Line 5: “upright”
making is like a declaration of war, a terrifying howl declaring
• Line 6: “Arose,” “howl,” “wakened,” “hounds”
• Line 7: “mouse,” “let,” “fall,” “altar,” “crumb” their intent to kill. The idea of guns that have a bloodthirsty
• Line 8: “worms,” “drew,” “into,” “mounds” desire to kill, filling the air with the noise of war, is a pretty scary
• Line 9: “glebe,” “cow,” “drooled,” “Till,” “God,” “called,” “No” one. It ends the poem on a note cosmic terror or pessimism. It
• Line 10: “It’s,” “gunnery,” “practice,” “out,” “at,” “sea” also raises the question of what exactly there is to "avenge." By
• Line 11: “Just,” “as,” “before,” “went,” “below” leaving this unspecified, the speaker seems to imply that there
• Line 12: “world,” “is,” “as,” “be” isn't actually anything to avenge. Instead, revenge is an excuse
• Line 13: “striving,” “strong,” “make” leaders make when they want to declare war.
• Line 14: “Red,” “war,” “redder,” “Mad,” “hatters” Ending in this manner also prevents the reader from letting
• Line 15: “more,” “Christés,” “sake” national leaders off the hook. At the beginning, describing the
• Line 16: “helpless,” “such,” “matters” guns as "unawares" might suggest that leaders shouldn't be
• Line 17: “That,” “this,” “is” held guilty for all the civilian death and damage caused by war.
• Line 18: “some,” “them’s,” “blessed,” “thing” After all, they're not aware that such effects will occur. By
• Line 19: “For,” “were,” “scour” ending with personification that emphasizes the malicious
• Line 20: “floor,” “for,” “threatening” intents of the guns, however, the poem suggests that the
• Line 21: “will,” “warmer,” “when” leaders are guilty. If they don't think about all the damage the
• Line 22: “blow” war will cause, that's because they are so focused on waging
• Line 23: “ever,” “for,” “men” "Red war" at any cost. They're to let innocent people die in the
• Line 24: “And,” “rest,” “eternal,” “sorely,” “need” name of war.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 11

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
CAESURA
Where P
Personification
ersonification appears in the poem:
While not used excessively in the poem, caesur
caesuraa plays a role in
• Line 1: “great guns, unawares,” varying the poem's rhythm and adding emphasis to certain
• Lines 33-34: “Again the guns disturbed the hour, / moments.
Roaring their readiness to avenge,”
One early instance, at the start of stanza 2, captures how the
poem uses caesura to enhance its effects:
APORIA
Aporia is when a speaker expresses doubt about what they are We thought it was the Judgment-day
saying. In "Channel Firing," this occurs when God discusses and sat upright. While drearisome
"Judgment-day," or the apocalypse. God expresses doubt or
uncertainty as to whether he'll ever bring about the apocalypse. Here, caesura combines with enjambment
enjambment. The sentence begun
This moment of doubt occurs in lines 21-23: in stanza 1 wraps around into stanza 2, coming to a sudden halt
at the period in the middle of the line. This sudden halt mimics
"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when what the sentence describes, which is how the dead are
I blow the trumpet (if indeed startled awake by the sound of gunfire and sit bolt upright. The
I ever do; [...] jamming stop of the sentence captures the feeling of being
startled awake.
In other words, Things will really heat up when I end the world—if I Stanzas 3, 4, 6, and 7 all also have sentences that end in the
ever end it. This is a particularly strange, disturbing, and bleakly middle of the line. On a broad stylistic level, this keeps the
humorous instance of aporia. For one thing, God is not poem varied and lively. Just as prose writers will often vary
traditionally imagined as being capable of doubt. After all, he is sentence length to create a feeling of rhythm and novelty, poets
supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful. Christian often vary where sentences stop within stanzas.
theologians have usually supposed God to exist outside of time,
In stanza 6, four caesurae, three lines in a row, create a sort of
grasping the entirety of world history at once. So, the
tortuousness in God's speech:
suggestion here that God doesn't actually know the future flies
against traditional religious thought.
“Ha,
Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
Furthermore, this isn't just doubt about what's going to I blow the trumpet (if indeed
happen, it's God's doubt about what he himself is going to do. I ever do; for you are men,
God seems to be unsure about his own intentions. Not only,
then, does the poem cast doubt on God's power, it also That is, there's a stop-start rhythm to this stanza, an
wonders if God is true to his word. Will he end the world as he awkwardness. On one level, this is the rhythm of uncertainty,
promised in the Book of Revelation? Does he actually care capturing the aporia
aporia, or doubt, that God expresses. More
about humans at all? The doubt raised in this stanza is matched generally, this awkwardness reflects the poem's general
by a glib, cynical tone. There's a sense that God has perhaps distrust of God—there's something cynical and off-putting
given up on the world. about his voice in the poem, and the rhythm created by the
The aporia express in this stanza can be extrapolated to the caesurae reflects that.
atmosphere of doubt that pervades the whole poem. The In the last line of the poem, a caesura adds to the sudden
character "God" in this poem can be read as a mouthpiece for somber lyrical quality of the line: "And Camelot, and starlit
the poem's doubt in God's very existence. In other words, the Stonehenge." Here, the comma adds a slowly wafting beat to
poem may be depicting God in this cheeky, cynical manner the line. This new rhythm matches the imagery of the poem, as
precisely because it's not entirely sure God exists in the first it slows down and pans out over time and space (just like a
place. At the very least, the poem is extremely skeptical of the scene in a film where the camera turns away from the action to
promises of religion—a theme that runs throughout the poem, look out over a broader landscape).
and which is also expressed succinctly by this instance of
So, although the poem doesn't employ caesura constantly, it
aporia.
makes them count when it does. They contribute to the feel of
the poem's language and help it convey different ideas, tones,
Where Aporia appears in the poem: and images.
• Lines 21-23: “It will be warmer when / I blow the
trumpet (if indeed / I ever do;” Where Caesur
Caesuraa appears in the poem:
• Line 1: “guns, unawares”

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 12

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com

• Line 5: “upright. While” • Lines 15-16: “sake / Than”

• Line 9: “drooled. Till” • Lines 17-18: “ judgment-hour / For”
• Line 14: “redder. Mad” • Lines 19-20: “scour / Hell’s”
• Line 21: “Ha, ha. It” • Lines 21-22: “when / I”
• Line 22: “trumpet (if” • Lines 22-23: “indeed / I”
• Line 23: “do; for” • Lines 27-28: “under / In”
• Line 25: “again. “I”
• Line 27: “one, “than” END-STOPPED LINE
• Line 36: “Camelot, and”
As often as the poem employs enjambment
enjambment, it also uses end-
stopped lines. These moments, combined with enjambment,
ENJAMBMENT contribute to the poem's rhythm. Many of the end-stops are
"Channel Firing" moves in and out of enjambment
enjambment. Instances of commas, colons, or semi-colons, creating temporary resting
enjambment convey much of the poem's tension, points as the poem's longish sentences unfold over several
disappointment, and frustration, as meaning is withheld until lines.
the following line. Take line 4, which is enjambed across a While enjambment creates tension and captures the poem's
stanza break: overall sense of uncertainty, end-stops keep the form in check.
They help emphasize the poem's rh rhyme
yme and meter
meter. Together
We thought it was the Judgment-da
Judgment-dayy with these devices, end-stops in turn draw attention to the
And sat upright. While drearisome poem's heavy dose of iron
ironyy and black humor. In a poem about
Arose the howl of wakened hounds: the violent disorder of the human world and powerlessness of
God, it's cheeky to then employ a consistent rhyme scheme and
Were there punctuation at the end of line 4, the line would steady meter. In other words, the well-ordered poem contrasts
make sense; it is a complete sentence. The enjambment pushes with the uncertainty of the world.
the reader quickly across the white space of the stanza break,
In the third stanza, the semi-colons in lines 9 and 11, and a
however, signaling that there is more to this assumption that "it
colon in line 12, create a sense of linguistic logic that mocks the
was the Judgment-day." The reader is pulled forward through
lack of logic in the world:
these lines in a way that subtly evokes the dead being
effectively pulled out of their graves by the sound of gunfire,
[...] Till God called, “No;;
curious to find out what happens next.
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Enjambment can also create a rather tumbling feeling, almost Just as before you went below;;
like dominoes knocking each other over, as one line bumps into The world is as it used to be::
the next in the process of creating the sentence's meaning. As
an example, take God's speech: Semi-colons are often used in prose to signal logical
connections and related thoughts. Because they can usually be
“All nations striving strong to mak
makee replaced with periods, they're not strictly necessary; rather,
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters they're a stylistic choice that signals a more advanced level of
The
Theyy do no more for Christés sak
sakee argumentation. Here, they subtly add to the poem's irony. God
Than you who are helpless in such matters. should have a very sophisticated knowledge and command of
the world, but as the poem goes on that's increasingly seen not
Here, this series of enjambments captures some of God's anger to be the case.
or bitterness towards national leaders who clearly don't follow
Another expressive use of punctuation as end-stop happens in
the rules laid out by Christianity. The enjambment of these
line 20:
lines pulls the reader down the page quickly and smoothly and,
in doing so, lends God's speech an air of inevitability.
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening....
....
Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
• Lines 4-5: “Judgment-day / And” This use of ellipsis, the series of periods after "threatening,"
• Lines 5-6: “drearisome / Arose” acts almost like a punch line. It signals that God is making a kind
• Lines 13-14: “make / Red” of joke, trailing off in what he considers to be a comic manner.
• Lines 14-15: “hatters / They” Good thing for them it's not the end of world, otherwise they'd be
going to HELL! God jokes. "Ha, ha." Of course, it's not quite so

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 13

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
funny for those who are stuck on earth as violence rages. Of course, this isn't just someone speaking. It's God. Normal
As these examples show, end-stops highlights the formal people fall back on clichés in everyday conversation because it
qualities of the poem while also adding to the poem's moments can be hard to come up with something original at the spur of
of irony. the moment. God, however, is all powerful. The Bible often
imagines him to speak very eloquently and poetically. The fact
that here he doesn't display that power, that he instead relies on
Where End-Stopped Line appears in the poem:
old human idioms, signals that he's not exactly all-powerful. As
• Line 1: “unawares,” the poem suggests throughout, his divine abilities are severely
• Line 2: “lay,” limited.
• Line 3: “window-squares,”
It's also interesting to note that this cliché comes after a
• Line 6: “hounds:”
particularly poetic turn of phrase: the polyptoton of "Red
Red war
• Line 7: “altar-crumb,”
redder
redder." So, it's not necessarily that God can't speak eloquently.
• Line 8: “mounds,”
Rather, he can't keep it up for very long. His swing from poetic
• Line 9: ““No;”
eloquence to lame cliché is all too human—decidedly not
• Line 10: “sea”
Godlike.
• Line 11: “below;”
• Line 12: “be:”
• Line 16: “matters.” Where Cliché appears in the poem:
• Line 18: “thing,” • Line 14: “Mad as hatters”
• Line 20: “threatening....”
• Line 23: “men,”
IRONY
• Line 24: “need).””
• Line 25: “wonder,” Two instances of iron
ironyy at the beginning of "Channel Firing" set
• Line 26: “ be,”” the tone for the rest of the poem. More specifically, these are
• Line 28: “century!”” both instances of dr
dramatic
amatic iron
ironyy, when the reader knows more
• Line 29: “head,” “.” about a situation than a character does. First, the "great guns"
• Line 30: “year,”” are personified as "unawares." Then, the dead wake thinking its
• Line 31: “said,” "Judgment-day," when it's really just the noise of gunfire.
• Line 32: “beer.”” This first moment of irony is a super straightforward example
• Line 33: “hour,” of dramatic irony, in that the poem clearly states that the guns
• Line 34: “avenge,” are "unaware[]" of the consequences of their actions. Here,
• Line 35: “Tower,” personification turns the guns into characters. These noisy
• Line 36: “Stonehenge.” characters spur the whole poem into being: they're responsible
for the misunderstanding that wakes the dead and causes God
CLICHÉ to clarify things.
The single use of cliché in the poem happens in line 14: "Mad as Beyond this misunderstanding, the irony of the first phrase can
hatters." This simile comes from the fact that historically also be understood on the level of verbal iron
ironyy—that is,
hatters—people who made hats—used mercury in the sarcasm. Although the speaker describes the guns as "great,"
production of hats. As a result, they often got mercury they're clearly not actually great, at least not in any positive
poisoning and went mad, or insane. Here, God is saying that sense. They may be great in that they are powerful, but they
national leaders' desire for war is insane. certainly have none of the greatness associated with people or
It's often unusual to encounter clichés in poetry—especially things that have benefited the world in some way. This major
relatively short poems such as this one—because poems are dose of skepticism and sarcasm about modern war, and about
very self-conscious in their use of language. Much of the time, modern nations more generally, informs the rest of the poem. A
poems want to employ the most original language possible. As a tongue-in-cheek attitude pervades the poem, especially its
result, poets may try to avoid tired old clichés. Hardy, however, representation of God. So, this initial moment of sarcasm can
pursues a slightly different strategy in the poem. In part this be read as throwing the entire poem in a sarcastic light.
can be tied to the fact that he began his career as a novelist The second moment of irony occurs at the end of the first
rather than a poet. Since novelists are often interested in how stanza: "We thought it was the Judgment-day / / And sat
people speak, they'll use clichés in dialogue if that seem like upright." In this instance of dramatic irony, the dead are awoken
what the character would actually say. The use of cliché in this by what they think is the sound of the apocalypse, when in
poem seems to stem from a similar impulse: this is how reality it's just the sound of gunfire. This is a form of bleak
someone might actually speak. humor, and the cynical, joking tone that God adopts confirms

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 14

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
this humor. The poem as whole takes such giant concerns as the On one level, this undermines the authority of national leaders.
history of violence, the fate of humanity, the end of the world, By comparing their offenses to those of a child or an unruly
and the existence of God, and treats them satirically. The initial worker, God suggests these leaders aren't such grand figures.
moment of misunderstanding kicks off that treatment. It They're actually rather pitiful. Second, this comparison also
downplays the power of God, who can be upstaged by human suggests that God doesn't have much sympathy for human
machines. suffering. Usually Christianity imagines God as being sad about
At the same time, it emphasizes the foolishness of humans, who all the souls who are sent to Hell. Here, it seems like God
seem to be on the brink of bringing about their own doesn't think it's such a big deal. As far as he's concerned, Hell
destruction. This latter point adds to the irony of the fifth is just a bunch of naughty people cleaning the floor. This
stanza, in which God declares that were it actually Judgment reflects God seeming attitude towards earthly suffering.
Day, those firing these guns and waging war would end up Although he knows it's happening, he's not very moved to do
scrubbing the floors of Hell. This is ironic because war is often anything about it.
glorified as a noble and patriotic cause; here, though, God Then, God says, "It will be warmer when / I blow the trumpet."
asserts that it is worthy of eternal damnation. The phrase "blow the trumpet" alludes to the seven trumpets
The poem's attitude towards God can also be considered ironic. that will herald the apocalypse. Of course, the apocalypse is
Although the poem depicts God as if he's real, it also uses that usually imagined as full of flames and bizarre occurrences, not
depiction to cast doubt on such reality. By having God use just the temperature getting a little "warmer." Again, this
clichés
clichés, aporia
aporia, and cynical jokes, the poem depicts God in a understatement suggests that God doesn't take things as
very different light than the Bible does. He seems more like a seriously as people like to imagine he does. To him, in this poem,
fictional character than a divine entity. This can be considered the apocalypse is a joke. It's unclear whether he'll even make it
irony because the poem seems to be doing one thing (depicting happen. And even if he does, it seems he won't take all the
God as if he is real) while it may actually be doing another suffering it causes that seriously.
(suggesting that he's only a fictional character). Throughout the
poem, then, irony frames the different themes, characters, and Where Understatement appears in the poem:
occurrences. • Lines 19-20: “they’d have to scour / Hell’s floor”
• Lines 21-22: “It will be warmer when / I blow the
Where Iron
Ironyy appears in the poem: trumpet”
• Line 1: “your great guns, unawares,”
• Lines 4-5: “We thought it was the Judgment-day / And ALLUSION
sat upright.” "Channel Firing" makes biblical, historical, and literary allusions
allusions.
• Lines 17-20: ““That this is not the judgment-hour / For The majority of the poem is informed by an allusion to
some of them’s a blessed thing, / For if it were they’d Christianity's conception of the end of the world, so let's begin
have to scour / Hell’s floor for so much threatening....” with that.
In the first stanza, the poem refers to "Judgment-day," a part of
UNDERSTATEMENT the apocalypse, or Christian end of the world. Often, Judgment
In "Channel Firing," God uses understatement as part of his Day is also a shorthand way for referring to the apocalypse as a
cynical way of speaking. First he says that the damned leaders whole. In Christian theology, at the end of the world the souls
of warmongering nations will have to "scour," or clean, "Hell's of the dead are reunited with their bodies in a massive
floor," a drastic understatement of the tortures traditionally resurrection. Then, God issues judgments on each person,
associated with Hell. Then he says "it will be warmer" during deciding who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. This is
the apocalypse—massively understating the scale and technically Judgment Day itself. More broadly, though, the
strangeness of destruction the Bible promises at the end of the Bible tells of many strange and horrific happenings during the
world. end of the world—such as a fiery mountain that turns the sea to
In this first example, "scour[ing]" the floor refers to the act of blood, poisoned water, and demonic torture.
vigorously scrubbing a floor with a rough sponge and strong Each major happening is preceded by one of the seven
soap. This is the kind of punishment one might assign to a child, trumpets of the apocalypse. Angels blow these trumpets,
or to someone working in a kitchen or on a ship, etc. It's not heralding the next phase of the end of the world. This is what's
necessarily the sort of thing that adequately punishes a serious alluded to in line 22 when God questions whether he will ever
crime. Christianity usually imagines Hell as full of tortures that "blow the trumpet." To "blow the trumpet" is to start the
are so much worse than having to clean the floor—flames, apocalypse. In the poem, the dead mistake the sound of gunfire
whips, instruments of torture, psychological torments, etc. for this divine trumpet and all the cataclysmic events that shall

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 15

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
follow it. This is part of the poem's main point: the development start of lines 7, 8, and 9. These lines also feature par
parallelism
allelism,
of human warfare has reached such a stage that it's beginning each introducing a creature on the scene ("The mouse," "The
to be indiscernible from the wrath of God. worms," "The glebe cow") and then describing how that
Next, at the end of the poem, the speaker references three creature reacts to the sound of the guns (by dropping crumbs,
different places, each of which alludes to a certain time period. wriggling back into the dirt, and drooling, respectively):
Stourton Tower, otherwise known as King Alfred's Tower, was
built in the 1700s in the South of England. It commemorates The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
the end of the Seven Years War between England and France. The worms drew back into the mounds,
The Seven Years War was an incredibly bloody conflict that also The glebe cow drooled. [...]
drew in Prussia, Austria, and Russia, among other countries. It
could be considered a world war, long before World War I The anaphora helps set the scene, creating a swift catalog of all
happened. the reactions to the gunfire. The mice are startled, the worms
frightened, and the cow, rather comically, simply drools, with no
Camelot refers to the mythical capital of Kind Arthur's court, as
appreciation of what's going on.
depicted in the King Arthur legends which date back in writing
as far as the 12th century. Throughout the Middle Ages, Polyptoton then occurs in the phrase "to make / Red war yet
Europeans were enthralled by the romances, or adventure redder
redder." Here, God repeats the same root word, "Red," in the
stories, of the chivalrous Arthur and his knights. These legends form "redder." "Red," in turn, is a synecdoche for blood (i.e., it
capture a distinctly medieval attitude towards violence as part stands in for blood), which in turn stands in for violence. Using
of a larger code of masculine honor. Additionally, although all these devices, God is saying that humans keep developing
Camelot has never been proved to exist, many people have technology that will make war bloodier, more violent.
tried to propose real locations for it, including in the South of On one level, this is just an example of the poem keeping its
England as well. In more modern times, the legend of Arthur language vivid and lively. It's an instance of poetic eloquence.
has also figured into England's national identity, becoming a Interestingly, God immediately follows up this eloquence with a
part of the cultural fabric that was part of England's rise as a simile that is also a cliché: "Mad as hatters" (i.e., crazy). Clichés
global military power. are the opposite of poetic inventiveness, since they're recycled
Finally, Stonehenge is neolithic stone monument that was built bits of language that can be used without much thought. Line
sometime between 3000 and 2000 BCE. No one knows what it 14, then, offers a marked variation in each of its two halves. It's
was used for or how it was built, though most people assume it almost as if God runs out of poetic steam after coming up with
was the site of rituals of one kind or another. It was possibly a polyptoton. As a result, this variety has a very human feel to it,
burial ground as well as a site for healing, and was possibly built capturing both the power of human creativity, as well as the
to coordinate with astronomical measurements. Whatever the limits of that creativity. God, however, is not supposed to
use, Stonehenge's appearance at the end of the poem experience such human limits.
represents a reach for back into human history. The sound of Taken on its own, then, this polytpton offers a pithy and
the guns fills the air around the monuments, suggesting that memorable criticism of the development of modern military
violence has been present throughout humanity's existence. At technology. Considered in its context within the poem, it also
the same time, the monument gestures towards a non- contributes to God's tone and voice, capturing the poem's
Christian era and, perhaps, an interest in healing rather than skeptical attitude towards him.
violence. Additionally, its possible use as a burial ground
Finally, there is a brief instance of polysyndeton in the poem's
mirrors the church's graveyard, reminding the reader that
final line:
death is an ever-present fact of life.
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.
Where Allusion appears in the poem:
• Line 4: “the Judgment-day” The repetition of "and" here draws out the phrase, in turn
• Line 17: “the judgment-hour” emphasizing just how far-reaching this sound of gunfire is (and
• Line 22: “I blow the trumpet” metaphorically
metaphorically, how war has been with humanity for all of its
• Line 35: “Stourton Tower” existence).
• Line 36: “Camelot,” “Stonehenge”
Where Repetition appears in the poem:
REPETITION • Line 7: “The”
There are a few moments of repetition in the poem. The first is • Line 8: “The”
an example of anaphor
anaphoraa, with the repetition of "The" at the • Line 9: “The”

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 16

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
everyone faces during service—where the priest, altar, and
• Line 14: “Red war yet redder” choir are.
• Line 36: “And,” “and” Window-squares (Line 3) - Presumably the stained-glass
windows behind the chancel in the church.
COLLOQUIALISM
Judgment-day (Line 4) - Most broadly, this refers to the
There are two very different instances of colloquialism in the apocalypse, the end of the world according to Christianity.
poem. The first occurs in line 15 with the word "Christés," and More specifically, it is the day when God casts a final judgment
second in line 30: "forty year." on all the souls of the earth, deciding who goes to Hell and who
This second instance is more straightforward, so let's look at it goes to Heaven.
first. The more conventional phrase for written English would Hounds (Line 6) - Dogs in or near the churchyard.
be "forty years" (i.e., I wish I hadn't spent forty years of my life
Altar-crumb (Line 7) - A crumb left on the altar in the church,
preaching). Yet Parson Thirdly, a country priest, drops the "s."
presumably from the Eucharist—the bread that ritually
This captures a way of speaking particular to certain dialects in
becomes the body of Christ during Christian communion.
England, in which people drop the "s" in "years" when they are
talking about a span of time. By capturing this quality in writing, Glebe cow (Line 9) - A glebe is a patch of land that a parish
the poem makes these characters seem authentic; they seem priest uses to support himself and/or the church. A "glebe cow,"
like real people in rural England. Hardy's novels all take place in then, is a cow the priest keeps on church land.
South England, so it makes sense that his poetry would also Gunnery (Line 10) - The firing of the large cannons on the
harness that geographic specificity. warships.
To return to "Christés." This is an outdated spelling of Christ, as Red war (Line 14) - "Red war" refers to the bloodiness of war.
in Jesus Christ, that was used in Middle English—the form of "Red" acts as a synecdoche for the blood—that is, God refers to
English used in the early Middle Ages (such as by the poet blood through its color. In turn, blood represents the violence
Geoffre
Geoffreyy Chaucer
Chaucer). The simplest reason that it's used here is of war.
that it has an extra syllable, allowing it to fit the iambic meter
meter: Mad as hatters (Line 14) - Mad as hatters is a cliché
cliché. Mad means
"crazy," and the phrase just means "really crazy." Historically, hat
They do | no more | for Christ
Christ- | és sak
sakee makers used mercury in the production of hats and often got
mercury poison as a result, which caused them to go insane.
Beyond this use, this spelling draws attention to the word, and Thus, mad as a hatter.
thus to Christianity as a whole. Throughout the poem,
Christianity has a received skeptical treatment. Because this Christés sake (Line 15) - Christés (pronounced Krees
Krees-tays) is a
archaic spelling appears amid conventional, modern spellings, it Middle English spelling of Christ, as in Jesus Christ. This archaic
has an artificial feel to it. There's something almost cheeky spelling both helps fill in the meter and creates a somewhat
about introducing this spelling. It feels as if, rather than ironic and artificial tone
tone. "Christés sake" just means following
speaking Christ's name reverently, the poem is being ironic the ethics and obligations of Christianity, such as helping other
about it. It wants to draw attention to how little Christianity has people and promoting peace.
done for world peace. Judgment-hour (Line 17) - This is just another way of referring
These two instances of colloquialism, taken together, to Judgment Day, as discussed above.
contribute to the lively and varied tones of the speakers in the Scour (Line 19) - To clean with abrasive soap and sponge. Here,
poem. having to scour the floor is a punishment.
Hell's floor (Line 20) - Normally, Hell is a depicted as a place of
Where Colloquialism appears in the poem: unimaginable torture. Here, however, God jokingly says the
• Line 15: “Christés” damned have to scrub its floor, as if Hell is an eternally dirty
• Line 30: “forty year” kitchen.
Trumpet (Line 22) - The Bible says the will be seven trumpets
of the apocalypse, which the angels blow to signal each new
VOCABULARY phase in the end of the world. To "blow the trumpet," then, is to
end the world.
Great guns (Line 1) - The powerful artillery cannons on Indifferent century (Line 28) - Indifferent means not-caring. An
warships. "Great" means big and powerful, with positive "indifferent century," then, is a period of time when people
connotations that quickly turn out to be ironic
ironic. (especially those in charge) don't care about the suffering of
Chancel (Line 3) - The chancel is the part of the church that others.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 17

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Forty year (Line 30) - A colloquial way of saying "forty years." rhyme, the meter gives the poem an almost sing-song feel. As
By dropping the "s," the poem captures how people talk in this the poem progress and reveals its satirical bite, this song-song
area of England. quality comes to seem ironic
ironic. The prettiness of these formal
Parson Thirdly (Line 31) - A fictional character in the poem, qualities does little to mask violence of the world and God's
who was presumably a parson, or country priest, before he callousness.
died. Sometimes, the meter varies for emphasis. Take lines 30 and
Stourton Tower (Line 35) - A monument built in the South of 32. Line 30 sticks to the meter:
England during the 1700s to commemorate the end of the
Seven Years War between England and France. This bloody “Instead
stead | of prea
prea- | ching for
for- | ty year
ear,”
conflict could be considered a world war, even though it
happened over a century before WWI. while lines 32 sneaks in an extra syllable:
Camelot (Line 36) - This was capital of the legendary King
“I wish | I had stuck | to pipes | and beer
beer.”
Arthur's kingdom. Although Camelot is most likely fictional,
many people have tried to find proof that it existed. Some have
The constant meter in line 30 captures the monotony that
proposed that it was in South England.
Parson Thirdly felt in his forty years of "preaching," whereas
Stonehenge (Line 36) - A famous monument made of stones in line 32 adds a little pep as the Parson thinks about a life of
a large ring. It dates back anywhere from 2000 to 3000 BCE. pleasure—getting drunk and smoking tobacco. This pep comes
in the form of an anapest (da-da-DUM
DUM) in the second foot.
Although the poem already has a sing-song feel to it, this
FORM, METER, & RHYME anapest emphasizes that feeling even more, almost as if the
Parson has slipped into an old drinking song.
FORM
Thus, throughout the poem meter helps both propel the
"Channel Firing" is written in nine rh
rhyming
yming quatrains. These narrative and emphasize the experiences of the different
quatrains provide an easy-to-grasp structure for the poem—it characters.
moves forward steadily and predictably. Quatrains help the
narrative of the poem move quickly and also break each section RHYME SCHEME
of the narrative into discrete sections. "Channel Firing" obeys a consistent rh
rhyme
yme scheme throughout:
Quatrains are often used to tell a story, as in ballad stanzas
stanzas. ABAB
Although this poem doesn't strictly adhere to the structure of
This is a really intuitive and common rhyme scheme to use for
these stanzas, it does tell a story—or, at least, crafts a short
rhymed quatr
quatrains
ains, and many ballads employ similar schemes.
vignette. Yet whereas ballads often tell stories of tragedy or
Because the poem has a kind of narrative, a scene in which
love, this poem is distinctly satirical.
different characters interact, the rhyme helps propel those
The first two stanzas set the scene, as the noise of the "great interactions. It keeps the poem churning from line to the next.
guns" breaks the church's windows, disturbs the churchyard Rhyme also draws attention to the meter
meter.
animals, and wakes the dead. Then, in stanzas 3 to 6, God
Additionally, rhyme adds a kind of sing-song artificiality to the
responds to the dead, clarifying that it's not Judgment Day
poem. As different speakers go on to describe the bleakness of
after all. In stanzas 7 to 8, the dead react pessimistically to what
world, adding to the poem's satirical and ironic edge, the rhyme
God has told them. And in the final stanza, the poem zooms out,
stands in stark contrast to that. The consistent, snappy rhymes
following the noise of the guns deeper into space and time.
seem like they are trying paper over the horror of life on
METER earth—and failing. This is of course intentional. By putting the
"Channel Firing" is written in straightforward iambic formal prettiness of the poem at odds with its content, the
tetr
tetrameter
ameter throughout, or four feet in a da-DUM
DUM rhythm per poem mirrors the way that common people get lied to. They get
line. This is a common meter for quatr
quatrains
ains. promised "great" things by religious or national leaders, but
reality turns out to be very different, much more "Mad" and
Line 3 is a good example of the poem's meter: "indifferent."
The poem draws attention to rhyme by using a lot of
And brok
brokee | the chan
chan- | cel win
win- | dow-squares
squares,
polysyllabic rhymes (words in which more than one syllable
rhymes). Often, this comes in the form of feminine rh
rhymes
ymes,
In many such lines, the straightforward meter merely helps
where the last syllable is unstressed. Often in poetry, when
poem keep moving at a quick speed. Additionally, the strong,
poets used feminine rhymes they make the stressed syllable
ever-present rh
rhyme
yme accentuates the meter. Combined with the

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 18

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
rhyme as well. For example, there's "hat
hatters" and "matters
ters" in fact, he even uses a cliché. It also seems that his powers are
lines 14 and 16, and "wo
wonnder" and "un
under" in lines 25 and 27. limited. He's not sure if there will ever been end of the
There's something almost excessive about such rhymes. Not world—even though he created the world! So although God is
only do they tack on an extra syllable, but they also don't try to knows more about what's going on than the humble dead, he's
be subtle. They draw attention to the artificiality of rhyme, not necessarily the all-powerful, all-knowing God that he's
putting distance between the reader and the poem, leading to traditionally imagined being.
the reader to question these speakers and their places in the Two dead people, besides the narrator, speak after God. The
world. first is unidentified. This dead person wonders, "Will the world
The poem ends on a very strong and unexpected rhyme: ever saner be"—if the world will ever be less insane than the
"avenge" with "Stonehenge." On their own, each of these words "indifferent," or cruelly uncaring, century they died in. After
is already vivid, provoking many different associations in the hearing God, this person seems to have lost some faith in the
reader's mind. Yet after reading "avenge" in line 34, very few fate of the world. Then, Parson Thirdly—a country priest,
readers would have predicted that it was going to be rhymed speaks. The Parson seems to have lost even more faith. He
with "Stonehenge." On a technical level, both words rhyme on wonders if, instead of devoting his life to religion, he should
their second syllables, which is already a somewhat tricky thing have spent his time smoking tobacco and drinking beer.
to do. Each of these speakers, then, contributes to the poem's
Furthermore, they accomplish one of the hardest and most consideration of faith and the fate of the world.
important tasks of rhyme: linking totally unconnected words,
which in turn leads the reader to ponder previously unimagined
connections in the real world. What does Stonehenge have to SETTING
do with vengeance, with violence in the name of revenge? Some
"Channel Firing" is set in a country churchyard. Since the poem
people have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing,
takes place at night, the church and churchyard are empty
in which case these two rhyming words are almost opposites.
except for animals and the dead, who all react to the sound of
Or could it, like Camelot and Stourton Tower, have been a place
the guns.
associated with military valor and male codes of honor? There
is no answer. Rather, this final rhyme leaves the reader to As a novelist, Thomas Hardy set all his novels in southern
ponder such questions. England. Although this poem can't be assumed to take place in
the same fictional universe as Hardy's novels, the end of the
poem does suggest that it occurs in a similar region. At the end
SPEAKER of the poem, the speaker names "Stourton Tower" and
"Stonehenge," two monuments located in southern England. As
There are several speakers in "Channel Firing." The main the sound of the guns travels inland, in passes through these
speaker is the narr
narrator
ator, one of the dead people in the graveyard monuments. This suggests that the warships are off the south
who are awoken by the sound of the guns. Additionally, God coast of England in the English Channel, the narrow body of
and two other dead people speak. war that separates England from France (and thus the rest of
Because the poem essentially presents a small narrative or continental Europe as well). In other words, the poem happens
scene, the main speaker can be thought of as a narrator. Other right at the edge of England, close to the European mainland
than the fact that this narrator is one of the dead, they remain where WWI would erupt in just a few months.
unidentified throughout the poem. At the beginning, the
narrator uses the first-person plural "we" to describe the
events of the poem. As this "we," the narrator speaks for all the CONTEXT
dead in the church's graveyard. Later in the poem, the speaker
does switch to the first-person singular, referring to "MyMy LITERARY CONTEXT
neighbour Parson Thirdly." Here, the speaker becomes a little Thomas Hardy was a highly influential late-Victorian and early-
more specific. By referring to the dead person next to the modernist writer. He started off his career as a novelist. His
speaker as their "neighbour," the speaker gives a friendly, cozy novels were written in the realist tradition, depicting people's
feel to the graveyard, as if it's a tightly-knit neighborhood. The lives and passions in the context of larger societal forces. Later
dead have the feeling of humble, everyday people. in life, he turned to poetry. Although the formal qualities of his
Meanwhile, God speaks in stanzas 3 through 6. In comparison poetry are fairly traditional, in terms of content Hardy's poetry
to the dead, God knows a lot more about what's going on. His turns away from earlier Victorian writing and towards
tone is cynical
cynical, ironic
ironic, and somewhat callous. He doesn't modernism.
necessarily speak in the grand tone that he does in the bible. In Victorian poets such as Robert Browning and Alfred, LLord
ord

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 19

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Tenn
ennyson
yson built on the poetry of the Romantics. Their poetry shunned in one form or another, it was something that English
focused on lyrical beauty and psychological intensity, often writers contended with throughout the 19th century. For
retelling older narratives, such as the legends of King Arthur. instance, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from
Hardy's poetry, on the other hand, offers a bleak assessment of Oxford in 1811 for promoting atheism. Most importantly, after
modern life. His forms may be traditional, but his content is up- Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859,
to-date and realistic. Similar modernist poets, such W.H. Auden evolution began to undermine any hope of taking the Bible
and W.B. YYeats
eats, also wrote poetry in fairly traditional forms literally. The world Hardy grew up in, then, was one where
while at the same discussing contemporary political affairs. religion was increasingly losing its central status in English life.
Whereas the Victorian poets emphasized sincerity, Hardy, like The increasing possibilities of modern technology also inform
many modernists, often chose irony instead. And where the poem. Military technology reached a new level of
Romantic writers, like Byron
Byron, created passionate heroes who advancement at the turn of the century. WWI would see the
resisted fate and whose inner lives always colored their use of poison gas, airplane battles, machine guns, trench
experience of the world, Hardy's speakers usually seem quietly warfare, and of course the incredibly powerful artillery
baffled by fate. Like characters in a realist novel, they muddle cannons that "Channel Firing" describes. These technologies
on as the affairs of the world rage around them. In Hardy's would only continue to advance throughout the 20th century.
poem "The
The Man He Killed
Killed," the speaker, who was once a In this way, "Channel Firing" inaugurates a new era of warfare
common foot soldier, tries to make sense of having to kill an on Earth.
enemy soldier that he probably could just as well have been
friends with. And in "The
The Darkling Thrush
Thrush," nature suggests a
hopefulness for future that the speaker can't quite believe; as MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
far as the speaker can tell, humanity is on a path of self-
destruction. EXTERNAL RESOURCES
The Romantics thought that nature had all the answers, if only • A Biogr
Biograph
aphyy of Hardy — A detailed biography of Hardy,
people looked with enough sensitivity. As the modernists came along with more poems, from the Poetry Foundation.
along, they cast suspicion on that belief. For them, both the (https:/
(https://www
/www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-hardy)
.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-hardy)
human world and the natural world were fragmented. After • Making and Firing an Artillery Cannon — A short,
WWI especially, it seemed that all the old promises of Western German, WWI-era film showing the production and firing
civilization had been destroyed, even revealed to be lies. It was of an artillery cannon. From the archives of the British Film
up to artists to try to put everything together in some kind of Institute. (https:/
(https://www
/www..youtube.com/
meaningful way. "Channel Firing," with its doubt in religion and watch?v=sZXb5uqUolM&t)
patriotism as traditional pillars of authority, represents a bridge
to the full-fledged modernism of a poem like "The The W
Waste
aste Land
Land," • A Brief History of Stourton T
Tower
ower — Concise information
about Stourton Tower, otherwise known as King Alfred's
written only a few years later.
Tower, along with some pictures, from Atlas Obscura.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT (https:/
(https://www
/www.atlasobscur
.atlasobscura.com/places/king-alfreds-
a.com/places/king-alfreds-
tower)
"Channel Firing" was written and published just months before
the outbreak of World War I. Although WWI introduced a new • A History of Stonehenge — Information about Stonehenge
level violence to the world, there were many bloody conflicts from English Heritage, the organization that looks after it.
that paved the way for such a war. In the last stanza of the (https:/
(https://www
/www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/
.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/
poem, the speaker references Stourton Tower, a memorial for stonehenge/history-and-stories/history
stonehenge/history-and-stories/history/) /)
the Seven Years War in the 1700s. Fought between England
• Possible LLocations
ocations of Camelot — An overview of possible
and France, and drawing in many other nations, the war cost
real locations for the mythical city of Camelot, from
hundreds of thousands of lives. During Hardy's lifetime, wars Historic UK. (https:/
(https://www
/www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/
.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/
like the Crimean War and the Boer War continued to draw in Camelot-Court-of-King-Arthur/)
powers from all over the world and kill countless people. Thus,
although in this poem Hardy almost seems to predict the onset LITCHARTS ON OTHER THOMAS HARDY POEMS
of WWI, he hardly pulls such a prediction out of thin air. • A Wife In LLondon
ondon
Instead, the poem can be seen as tapping into the long history • Neutr
Neutral
al T
Tones
ones
of humanity's increasing capabilities for violence. • The Con
Convvergence of the T
Twain
wain
The poem also builds on the history of religious doubt in • The Darkling Thrush
English intellectual life. Although such doubt can hardly be • The Man He Killed
considered the norm, and atheists were often punished or

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 20

 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com

HOW T
TO
O CITE
MLA
Griffin, Brandan. "Channel Firing." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 6 Mar
2020. Web. 8 Jun 2020.

CHICAGO MANUAL
Griffin, Brandan. "Channel Firing." LitCharts LLC, March 6, 2020.
Retrieved June 8, 2020. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/
thomas-hardy/channel-firing.

©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 21