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?