Thomas Hardy

A Night of Questionings

On the eve of All-Souls’ Day
I heard the dead men say
Who lie by the tottering tower,
To the dark and doubling wind
At the midnight’s turning hour,
When other speech had thinned:
‘What of the world now?’
The wind whiffed back: ‘Men still
Who are born, do good, do ill
Here, just as in your time:
Till their years the locust hath eaten,
Leaving them bare, downbeaten;
Somewhiles in springtide rime,
Somewhiles in summer glow,
Somewhiles in winter snow: –
No more I know.’

The same eve I caught cry
To the selfsame wind, those dry
As dust beneath the aisles
Of old cathedral piles,
Walled up in vaulted biers
Through many Christian years:
‘What of the world now?’
Sighed back the circuiteer:
‘Men since your time, shrined here
By deserved ordinance,
Their own craft, or by chance,
Which follows men from birth
Even until under earth,
But little difference show
When ranged in sculptured row,
Different as dyes although: –
No more I know.’

On the selfsame eve, too, said
Those swayed in the sunk sea-bed
To the selfsame wind as it played
With the tide in the starless shade
From Comorin to Horn,
And round by Wrath forlorn:
‘What of the world now?’
And the wind for a second ceased,
Then whirred: ‘Men west and east,
As each sun soars and dips,
Go down to the sea in ships
As you went – hither and thither;
See the wonders of the deep,
As you did, ere they sleep;
But few at home care whither
They wander to and fro;
Themselves care little also! –
No more I know.’

Said, too, on the selfsame eve
The troubled skulls that heave
And fust in the flats of France,
To the wind wayfaring over
Listlessly as in trance
From the Ardennes to Dover,
‘What of the world now?’
And the farer moaned: ‘As when
You mauled these fields, do men
Set them with dark-drawn breaths
To knave their neighbours’ deaths
In periodic spasms!
Yea, fooled by foul phantasms,
In a strange cyclic throe
Backward to type they go: –
No more I know.’

That night, too, men whose crimes
Had cut them off betimes,
Who lay within the pales
Of town and county jails
With the rope-groove on them yet,
Said to the same wind’s fret,
‘What of the world now?’
And the blast in its brooding tone
Returned: ‘Men have not shown,
Since you were stretched that morning,
A white cap your adorning,
More lovely deeds or true
Through thus neck-knotting you;
Or that they purer grow,
Or ever will, I trow! –
No more I know.’