The title of this poem is significant. ‘Drummer Hodge’, a boy soldier, has a down-to-earth name which describes the job he did. It is ironically simple considering the importance of what the boy signifies in terms of the exploitation of children in a world damaged by war.

A poem set in the Second Boer War, it tells the story of a drummer boy who may have been as young as ten. Children were recruited from orphanages or from desperately poor homes where it would mean one less mouth to feed. He would have had cursory education, little understanding of why he was in Africa and no control of his fate.

In Hardy’s poem Drummer Hodge was killed in battle and left in a mass grave. For boys like him ‘home’ would most likely have been the army and the men who took haphazard care of him. However, it was nonetheless a foreign environment and the poem does refer to his ‘Wessex home’ with which he was at least familiar.

Hardy was against the Boer conflict, which he regarded as a manifestation of British imperialism and greed for South African mineral resources. He believed the Boers were justified in defending their farms and property. This poem, written in 1899 just a few weeks after the start of the war, reflects his anti-war sentiments. It also reflects his wish to honour the boys who found themselves caught up in conflicts. So Drummer Hodge represents those like him who met the same fate.

It is worth comparing this poem to Hardy’s other works. The theme that dominates his novels and poetry is the inevitability of fate; hence the references to the stars. In this poem there is something inevitable about the death of this boy and those children he represents, including the boy soldiers who later died in the First World War. There are also other notable contrasts; the dry terrain of South Africa and the moist green climate of Wessex; the boy’s unimportance on earth but his symbolic importance after death;

Structure
The poem is made up of three six-line stanzas. Hardy was a traditionalist in terms of his poetic form. These stanzas comprise alternating iambic tetrameters, that is four metric feet to a line, and iambic trimeters, that is three metric feet to the line. Although not a traditional four-lined ballad stanza, the rhythm and structure of the lines are similar. There is a regular ABABAB, CDCDCD, EFEFEF rhyme scheme.

This structure perhaps reflects the innocence and lack of sophistication of the boy. Ironically, it is also the structure of many hymns, appropriately as it aims to recognise, even celebrate, the lives of children like Drummer Hodge, who died in such circumstances.

There is a logical progression, with an introduction about Hodge, followed by a description of the landscape and then description of the stars. This takes the reader from the particular circumstances of the boy to his ultimate fate and his cosmic significance.

Language and Imagery
The dominant imagery is that of the stars, representing fate, that appear in all three stanzas.

Apart from the South African references, for example, ‘kopje’ and ‘veldt’, which some students may find exotic if unfamiliar, the language is straightforward and direct.