A Christmas Ghost-Story

Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)



South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies - your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
  
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
  
Christmas-eve, 1899.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on April 19, 2023

28 sec read
26

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBXXCC DDCC
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 521
Words 96
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 4

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, was not a Scottish Minister, not a Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland nor a Professor of Eccesiastical History at Edinburgh University. more…

All Thomas Hardy poems | Thomas Hardy Books

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