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!"