Channel Firing

So down we lay again. `I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,
‘Said one, `than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!’

And many a skeleton shook his head.
`Instead of preaching forty year,’
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
`I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.

‘Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Complete poem here