Thou [art] my battle axe [and] weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms. Jeremiah 51:20
The Israelites seldom listened to their prophets’ warnings to turn away from national conflict. Jeremiah vows angrily to turn the weapon of God’s law against the tribes and end their expansionist ambitions for good; war itself will be destroyed. World War I was described at the time as the war to end all wars, yet history has shown that we are no better than our forebears at heeding Jeremiah’s warning. Thomas Hardy, often dismissed as a stark pessimist by careless readers, follows Jeremiah’s thought in his poem ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ (1915). War is not merely ineffective but in the scale of human existence merely irrelevant.
Yonder a maid and her wight*
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die. (Lines 9-12) *man
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