The Wind Blew Words
By Thomas Hardy
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.