From Shutterstock “Instead of preaching forty year / I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer,” says Parson Thirdly in Thomas Hardy’s poem Channel Firing . The parson is dead and is lying in his tomb when he is awakened by the sound of cannons. He and many other dead people sit up in their tombs thinking that the Judgement Day has arrived. But God tells them to go back to sleep. “It’s gunnery practice out at sea,” God says, “Just as before you went below; / The world is as it used to be.” God goes on to say that He may abandon the idea of the final Judgement altogether “for you are men / And rest eternal sorely need.” Parson Thirdly’s skeleton nods his head in agreement. Then he turns to his neighbour-skeleton and says that all his preaching and teaching of morality and spirituality was in vain since the world never improved a bit with all that. It was better to enjoy life when he had the time. The parson feels that he wasted a whole lifetime doing something that was of no use to any...
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