Thomas Hardy

The Wind Blew Words

The wind blew words along the skies,
And these it blew to me
Through the wide dusk: ‘Lift up your eyes,
Behold this troubled tree,
Complaining as it sways and plies;
It is a limb of thee.

‘Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round –
Dumb figures, wild and tame,
Yea, too, thy fellows who abound –
Either of speech the same
Or far and strange – black, dwarfed, and browned,
They are stuff of thy own frame.’

I moved on in a surging awe
Of inarticulateness
At the pathetic Me I saw
In all his huge distress,
Making self-slaughter of the law
To kill, break, or suppress.