Discuss the poetry of Thomas Hardy in light of interest in both "chance" and in the indifference of nature. What seems to be his attitude toward war and violence?

One of Thomas Hardy's best-known poems is "Hap," in which the speaker expresses the view that an indifferent universe, one governed by chance, is worse than one ruled by a hostile God. If there were a "vengeful god," he says, "Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die." The theme of randomness and the way it governs the human condition is stated in Hardy's novels as well. Another famous poem is "The Man he Killed," in which a soldier observes that it is mere chance that has made the man he's struck down an enemy, and in the absence of war, the man could have been a friend:

"Yes; Quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown."

Hardy describes the insanity of war not only here, but perhaps even more effectively in "Channel Firing," written on the eve of World War I. The poem is a dialogue between dead men and God, when the dead are "awakened" in their crypts in a country church by the horrible sound of gunnery practice on the naval vessels in the Channel. At first, they believe the sound is that of the Last Trumpet on Judgment Day, but they are then told by God that man, in his foolishness, is simply planning another round of war and destruction. The dead go back to their rest, saying,

"I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "Than when he sent us under,
In our indifferent century!"

Hardy closes the poem with an eerie stanza pointing out that man's reckless behavior is unending, stretching through the millennia:

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and star-lit Stonehenge