Drummer Hodge
- 1
- They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
- Uncoffined--just as found:
- His landmark is a kopje-crest
- That breaks the veldt[4] around;
- And foreign constellations west
- Each night above his mound.
- 2
- Young Hodge the Drummer never knew--
- Fresh from his Wessex home--
- The meaning of the broad Karoo,[5]
- The Bush,[6] the dusty loam,
- And why uprose to nightly view
- Strange stars amid the gloam.
- 3
- Yet portion of that unknown plain
- Will Hodge forever be;
- His homely Northern breast and brain
- Grow to some Southern tree,
- And strange-eyed constellations reign
- His stars eternally.
--Thomas Hardy, 1902
[4]South African Dutch (Afrikaans) ford for small plain or
prairie. In previous line, "kopje-crest" is Afrikaans for a small hill. The
poem is a lament for an English soldier killed in the Boer War (1899-1902).
[5]A dry tableland region in South Africa.
[6]British colonial word for an uncleared area of land.