Poems (Hardy)/As if it had not been?
AS IF IT HAD NOT BEEN?
A WHIRL of gnats above a twilight pool
Falling a-crisp when summer lightnings blaze;
A black foray from out the anthill there,
That drowns beneath a sudden rush of rain;
A universe of crawling atoms, dead
Within a sun-dried inch of vagrant foam
Stranded by slowly lapsing July pond,—
And all is naught, as if it had not been?
Slow æons, then a watery wash of air;
Huge fronds and monster forests fallen and old;
Myriad creatures whelmed in ribbèd rocks,
And man at last, and last, upon a whirling world;
Then all burnt out to ashes, dead and cold,—
And all is naught, as if it had not been?
Falling a-crisp when summer lightnings blaze;
A black foray from out the anthill there,
That drowns beneath a sudden rush of rain;
A universe of crawling atoms, dead
Within a sun-dried inch of vagrant foam
Stranded by slowly lapsing July pond,—
And all is naught, as if it had not been?
Slow æons, then a watery wash of air;
Huge fronds and monster forests fallen and old;
Myriad creatures whelmed in ribbèd rocks,
And man at last, and last, upon a whirling world;
Then all burnt out to ashes, dead and cold,—
And all is naught, as if it had not been?