THERE was a time in former years— While my roof-tree was his— When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this! I should have murmured anxiously, “The pricking rain strikes cold; His road is bare of hedge or tree, And he is getting old.” But now the fitful chimney-roar, The drone of Thorncombe trees, The Froom in flood upon the moor, The mud of Mellstock Leaze, The candle slanting sooty wick’d, The thuds upon the thatch, The eaves-drops on the window flicked, The clacking garden-hatch, And what they mean to wayfarers, I scarcely heed or mind; He has won that storm-tight roof of hers Which Earth grants all her kind. A WET NIGHT I PACE along, the rain-shafts riddling me, Mile after mile out by the moorland way, And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray Into the lane, and round the corner tree; Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred, And the enfeebled light dies out of day, Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say, “This is a hardship to be calendared!” Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot, When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here, And night and storm were foes indeed to fear, Times numberless have trudged across this spot In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot, And taking all such toils as trifles mere. BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER A TIME there was—as one may guess And as, indeed, earth’s testimonies tell— Before the birth of consciousness, When all went well. None suffered sickness, love, or loss, None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings; None cared whatever crash or cross Brought wrack to things. If something ceased, no tongue bewailed, If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung; If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed, No sense was stung. But the disease of feeling germed, And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong; Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed How long, how long? NEW YEAR’S EVE “I HAVE finished another year,” said God, “In grey, green, white, and brown; I have strewn the leaf upon the sod, Sealed up the worm within the clod, And let the last sun down.” “And what’s the good of it?” I said. “What reasons made you call From formless void this earth we tread, When nine-and-ninety can be read Why nought should be at all? “Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ‘who in This tabernacle groan’— If ever a joy be found herein, Such joy no man had wished to win If he had never known!” Then he: “My labours—logicless— You may explain; not I: Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess That I evolved a Consciousness To ask for reasons why.