Laudator Temporis Acti

Ford Madox Hueffer, aka Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939), From the Soil, II (The Small Farmer Soliloquizes), in his Collected Poems (London: Martin Secker, 1916), pp. 120-121 (ellipses in original):

I wonder why we toiled upon the earth
From sunrise until sunset, dug and delved,
Crook-backed, cramp-fingered, making little marks
On the unmoving bosoms of the hills,
And nothing came of it. And other men
In the same places dug and delved and ended
As we have done; and other men just there
Shall do the self-same things until the end.
I wonder why we did it....Underneath
The grass that fed my sheep, I often thought
Something lay hidden, some sinister thing
Lay looking up at us as if it looked
Upwards thro' quiet waters; that it saw
Us futile toilers scratching little lines
And doing nothing. And maybe it smiled
Because it knew that we must come to this....
I lay and heard the rain upon the roof
All night when rain spelt ruin, lay and heard
The east wind shake the windows when that wind
Meant parched up land, dried herbage, blighted wheat,
And ruin, always ruin creeping near
In the long droughts and bitter frosts and floods.
And when at dawning I went out-a-doors
I used to see the top of the tall shaft
O' the workhouse here, peep just above the downs,
It was as if the thing were spying, waiting,
Watching my movements, saying, "You will come,
Will come at last to me." And I am here...
And down below that Thing lay there and smiled;
Or no, it did not smile; it was as if
One might have caught it smiling, but one saw
The earth immovable, the unmoved sheep
And senseless hedges run like little strings
All over hill and dale....