Natures Questioning
EN 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; Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn, As though the master's ways Through the long teaching days Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne. And on them stirs, in lippings mere (As if once clear in call, But now scarce breathed at all)— "We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here! "Has some Vast Imbecility, Mighty to build and blend, But impotent to tend, Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry? "Or come we of an Automaton Unconscious of our pains?… Or are we live remains Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone? "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?" Thus things around.
No answerer I…. Meanwhile the winds, and rains, And Earth's old glooms and pains Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbors nigh.
Thomas Hardy
Other author posts
In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations
Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk Only a thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass...
The Man He Killed
Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have set us down to wet Right many a nipperkin But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place
Seen By The Waits
Through snowy woods and shady We went to play a To the lonely manor-lady By the light of the Christmas moon We violed till, upward glancing To where a mirror leaned, We saw her airily dancing, Deeming her movements screened;
The Cave Of The Unborn
I rose at night and The Cave of the Unborn, And crowding shapes surrounded For tidings of the life to be,
