| Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898. |
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| 42. Nature’s Questioning |
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| WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool, | |
| Field, flock, and lonely tree, | |
| All seem to look at me | |
| Like chastened children sitting silent in a school; | |
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| Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn, | 5 |
| As though the master’s ways | |
| Through the long teaching days | |
| Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne. | |
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| And on them stirs, in lippings mere | |
| (As if once clear in call, | 10 |
| But now scarce breathed at all)— | |
| “We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here! | |
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| “Has some Vast Imbecility, | |
| Mighty to build and blend, | |
| But impotent to tend, | 15 |
| Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry? | |
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| “Or come we of an Automaton | |
| Unconscious of our pains?… | |
| Or are we live remains | |
| Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone? | 20 |
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| “Or is it that some high Plan betides, | |
| As yet not understood, | |
| Of Evil stormed by Good, | |
| We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?” | |
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| Thus things around. No answerer I…. | 25 |
| Meanwhile the winds, and rains, | |
| And Earth’s old glooms and pains | |
| Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbors nigh. | |
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