THE BLOW

That no man schemed it is my hope -

Yea, that it fell by will and scope

Of That Which some enthrone,

And for whose meaning myriads grope.

For I would not that of my kind

There should, of his unbiassed mind,

Have been one known

Who such a stroke could have designed;

Since it would augur works and ways

Below the lowest that man assays

To have hurled that stone

Into the sunshine of our days!

And if it prove that no man did,

And that the Inscrutable, the Hid,

Was cause alone

Of this foul crash our lives amid,

I'll go in due time, and forget

In some deep graveyard's oubliette

The thing whereof I groan,

And cease from troubling; thankful yet

Time's finger should have stretched to show

No aimful author's was the blow

That swept us prone,

But the Immanent Doer's That doth not know,

Which in some age unguessed of us

May lift Its blinding incubus,

And see, and own:

“It grieves me I did thus and thus!”