From the opening the two men are highlighted: ‘he and I’. And the important factor of chance: ‘Had he and I but met ....’ ‘Had’ and ‘but’ = if only. ‘We should have sat us down ....’ The pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ underline the potential certain friendship. The dialect words for drinking ‘wet / Right many a nipperkin!’ underline that these are two goodhearted country chaps.
But chance intervened. Or perhaps governments intervened. The powers that Hardy referred to as organising the ‘scheduled slaughter’ in the War Office and who had sent Drummer Hodge out to the Transvaal, ‘ranged’ (lined up) these two potential friends ‘as infantry’ (soldiers who fight on foot) ‘face to face’. The repeated ‘face’ literally illustrates how their heads were lined up on opposing sides. So does ‘I shot at him as he at me’ – both men are acting in exactly the same way. But it just so happens that (I) ‘killed him’.
So, in the third quatrain, how to explain this and to justify it? ‘I shot him dead because – ‘ and the dash, the hesitation, says it all. Because what? The glib answer supplied by the powers that be is ‘Because he was my foe, / Just so: my foe of course he was; / That’s clear enough...’ But, for all the assertion, it isn’t clear enough. The assertion is set out and repeated for reassurance: ‘Because he was my foe, /Just so’ ‘of course he was;’ ‘That’s clear enough’. Actually, it isn’t clear at all, as the rhyme of ‘my foe’ and ‘although’ makes clear.
From the opening the two men are highlighted: ‘he and I’. And the important factor of chance: ‘Had he and I but met ....’ ‘Had’ and ‘but’ = if only. ‘We should have sat us down ....’ The pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ underline the potential certain friendship. The dialect words for drinking ‘wet / Right many a nipperkin!’ underline that these are two goodhearted country chaps.But chance intervened. Or perhaps governments intervened. The powers that Hardy referred to as organising the ‘scheduled slaughter’ in the War Office and who had sent Drummer Hodge out to the Transvaal, ‘ranged’ (lined up) these two potential friends ‘as infantry’ (soldiers who fight on foot) ‘face to face’. The repeated ‘face’ literally illustrates how their heads were lined up on opposing sides. So does ‘I shot at him as he at me’ – both men are acting in exactly the same way. But it just so happens that (I) ‘killed him’.So, in the third quatrain, how to explain this and to justify it? ‘I shot him dead because – ‘ and the dash, the hesitation, says it all. Because what? The glib answer supplied by the powers that be is ‘Because he was my foe, / Just so: my foe of course he was; / That’s clear enough...’ But, for all the assertion, it isn’t clear enough. The assertion is set out and repeated for reassurance: ‘Because he was my foe, /Just so’ ‘of course he was;’ ‘That’s clear enough’. Actually, it isn’t clear at all, as the rhyme of ‘my foe’ and ‘although’ makes clear.
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