Thomas Hardy

* * *

Freed the fret of thinking,
Light of lot were we,
Song with service linking
Like to bird or bee:
Chancing bale unblinking,
Freed the fret of thinking
On mortality!

Had not thought-endowment
Beings ever known,
What Life once or now meant
None had wanted shown –
Measuring but the moment –
Had not thought-endowment
Caught Creation’s groan!

Loosed from wrings of reason,
We might blow like flowers,
Sense of Time-wrought treason
Would not then be ours
In and out of season;
Loosed from wrings of reason
We should laud the Powers!