Read "Nature's Questioning" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool, / Field, flock, and lonely tree, / All seem to gaze 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 neighbours nigh.