The Wisdom of the Skies, Self-Impeach'd

A melancholy passage from William Cowper's Tirocinium, when theodicy and optimism fail, Creation is confounded, and cosmology meets despondency.

 

Why did the fiat of a God give birth

To yon fair Sun, and his attendant Earth? 

And, when descending he resigns the skies,

Why takes the gentler Moon her turn to rise,

Whom Ocean feels through all his countless waves,

And owns her power on every shore he laves?

Why do the seasons still enrich the year, 

Fruitful and young as in their first career?

Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees,

Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze;

Summer in haste the thriving charge receives 

Beneath the shade of her exanded leaves,

Till autumn's fiercer heats and plenteous dews

Dye them at last in all their glowing hues,—

'Twere wild profusion all, and bootless waste,

Power misemploy'd, munificence misplaced,

Had not its author dignified the plan,

And crown'd it with the majesty of man.

Thus form'd, thus placed, intelligent, and taught,

Look where he will, the wonders God has wrought,

The wildest scorner of his Maker's laws

Finds in a sober moment time to pause,

To press th' important  question on his heart,

'Why form'd at all, and wherefore as thou art?'

If man be what he seems, this hour a slave,

the next mere dust and ashes in the grave;

Endued with reason only to descry

His crimes and follies with an aching eye;

With passions, just that he may prove with pain,

The force he spends against their fury vain;

And if, soon after having burnt, by turns,

With every lust, with which frail nature burns,

His being end, where death dissolves the bond,

The tomb take all, and all the blank beyond;

Then he, of all that nature has brought forth, 

Stands self-impeach'd the creature of least worth,

And useless while he lives, and when he dies,

Brings into doubt the wisdom of the skies.