What Is The End To Which All Things Progress?

No man will ever know; Not though for countless years Not though with toil and tears Millions of human brains Ever more strong and clear, Rise on this planet here; And with more perfect skill, With cunning greater still Than any yet attains, Probe for the mystery.

Why all these burning suns Ringed with their planets Driving through endless space? By what strange accident Rose there to consciousness On this poor ball of earth A being aware, Who can wonder and question? A speck in the Universe, Who looks up aghast At the glittering riddle That night ever brings him? One speck that dissents From the law of the Whole, The one interruption To the balanced perfection, The voiceless and passionless life Of the meaningless Whole?

And when, in countless years, At last comes the moment When this little system, The sun and the moon and the stars that are seven, Shall crash to its doom 'Gainst some on-coming sphere-world, And with infinite roaring And hideous combustion, Burst all into atoms And seething abysses Of nebulae, fiery and whirling, Then, with it shall perish The last fading traces Of life and of love And of human endeavour That are left on this cold, lifeless earth-star;

And so shall go on For ever and ever Through infinite spaces, World making and breaking, And Man's little moment, His life on this planet, A drop in the ages, Shall pass unlamented, Shall pass unrecurring, A strange inexplicable chance In the meaningless Whole.