The Dewy Morn by Richard Jefferies

He had not stayed to look at the stars, or to consider before his deed in the shadow of the chestnut tree. His purpose was death, and he had walked to it straight without looking to the right or to the left. The dim outline of the hills was nothing to him; he had seen in the hills nothing but mounds of chalk in life, why gaze at them on the eve of death? In the years of his life he had never lifted his eyes to the stars except to see if the sky was clear from cloud.

There was no meaning to him in the stars, or in the hills, or in the sea whose long low surge beat the beach beyond them. The idea of immortality had never been grasped, nor the idea of anything beyond the material and tangible. It is questionable whether he had ever grasped even the idea of a gas, as it is invisible -- that which he could see and touch was all that Godwin knew.