HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2061 9/12/02 "SEPTEMBER 2002 NOTES AND QUERIES" ===================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 00:13:31 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re:9/11 --This Day Greeting friends, On the Tragic Anniversary of 9/11: We have listened this very day, in fear and trepidation, every time an aircraft passes overhead, --but also, in joy and celebration, to Mozart's glorious *Requiem* being played in over 180 cities across the world, from Tokyo to Turin, Baltimore to Berlin, London to New York. Many of us have been to Commemoration Services, with candles, prayers and song (accompanied in New England by Hurricane storms -- a slain tree lies uprooted across my garage as I speak). I'm not sure where to turn to in Hardy. I'm not a Nationalist-- nor was Hardy. Pacifist to the core, he did though, find the words -- bitterly ironic, maybe --but still, the words which perhaps he might have wished to have shared with us, in tenderness and compassion, had he known this very day: "In our heart of hearts believing Victory crowns the just, And that braggarts must Surely bite the dust, Press we to the the field ungrieving, In our heart of hearts believing Victory crowns the just." "Men Who March Away'" ========== Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:39:12 +1000 From: David Cornelius Subject: This Day While Rosemarie has quoted from one of my favourite poems I feel that Hardy would have looked at unfolding events with a mixture of sadness and irony. His poem "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" tends to fit so many such occasions, particularly stanza II: Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass: Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. It has a comforting long-term ring about it. Regards, David Cornelius ========== Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 23:36:52 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Civil War Dear Bill-- I'm going to post your good letter on TTHA's Forum. To sign up for responses to your question please go to: HARDY-L-request@mailhost1.csusm.edu It is free. Cheers, Rosemarie PS I am an avid watcher of the *Civil War* series. It's excellent-- even on a second showing. ________________ >I'm writing to you in your capacity as President of the Thomas Hardy >Association. I was watching Ken Burns' Civil War series the other day and >Congressman Symington recited a few lines of a poem that he attributed to >Thomas Hardy, but didn't give the name of the poem. It tells of how in >other circumstances, one might lift a cup (or something to that effect) >with one who is now his enemy. I was read the poem a long time ago, but >never did catch the title. Would you happen to know it? > * Bill Nevitsky ========== Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 23:00:22 -0500 From: Bill Morgan Subject: Re: Civil War/Hardy Poem Good evening, Bill-- I think Congressman Symington and you are probably thinking of "The Man He Killed," one of Hardy's Boer War poems. The Man He Killed 'Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! 'But ranged as infantry And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. 'I shot him dead because-- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although 'He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like--just as I-- Was out of work--had sold his traps-- No other reason why. 'Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.' 1902 It certainly speaks to the arbitrariness of the "enmity" created by war. cheers, Bill Morgan ==========