Thomas Hardy

Here you will find the Poem A Christmas Ghost-Story of poet Thomas Hardy

A Christmas Ghost-Story

South of the Line, inland from far Durban, 
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman. 
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, 
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans 
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know 
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law 
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, 
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? 

And what of logic or of truth appears 
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years? 
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied, 
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."