Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Hardy begins by establishing the idea of the timelessness and measured pace of rural life. The reference in the title to the impact of war isn’t touched upon. 
 A man and his old horse carry out the action: plowing a field, breaking up the lumpy earth to prepare it for planting. 
 As in  Channel Firing ), the first letter of each line is capitalised. Each line is a full clause, ending on a verb composed of a single accented rhyming syllable, and so it reads slowly, peacefully. The middle two lines in particular make a slow and calm start with two unstressed syllables. 
 The pastoral scene is spare and earthy, like an early Van Gogh painting. 
 
 The opening word “Only” suggests ironically that that this is a simple scene, though the underlying sinister presence of war is implied. 
 The  alliteration  of “slow silent,” “stumble,” and “stalk” give a soft musicality to the stanza, along with the calm long “o” of “Only” and “slow.” Both the man and his old horse – not an energetic stallion or ox – are “half asleep,” and so is this first section of the poem, since they alone populate it. 
 The rhythm of the words “stumbles and nods” along with the horse; it is difficult to get further from a military march than this. 
 This stanza is understated and doesn’t romanticise farm work. 
 Perhaps the “man harrowing clods” in the very first line is a smaller, more mundane version of “breaking of nations.” By immediately following the title with that image, Hardy contrasts the “annals of war” with ordinary pastoral life.
In Time of The Breaking of Nations