Questionings

Now that wan sunsets, wintery
With icy gold, paint bleak the sky;
Now nights are starless utterly,
And snow and sleet cut moaning by,
One’s memory keeps one company,
And sorrow puts its “when” and “why.”

Such inquisition, when alone,
Leads on to ways of doubt and dread,
Despair has miled with many a stone,
Carved with the faces of our dead,
Stamped on whose brows we read, “Unknown!
No further look, nor seek to tread.”

And, oh! that weariness of soul
That leans upon our dead, the clod
And air have taken, as a whole,
Through some mysterious period!--
Life! with its questions of control!
Death! with its unguessed laws of God!