The Necessitarian
The Necessitarian - meaning Summary
Absurdity and Divine Agency
The poem contemplates an unnamed power that dispenses both cosmic order and petty absurdity. The speaker observes how sudden reversals, grotesque chance, and laughter choked by suffering suggest a single agency behind joy and pain. No theology claims this power, yet its effects—both solemn and ridiculous—are treated as real. The closing lines assert that the same force that made planets and roses also grants the impulse behind a wayside joke.
Read Complete AnalysesI know not in Whose hands are laid To empty upon earth From unsuspected ambuscade The very Urns of Mirth; Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise And cheer our solemn round-- The Jest beheld with streaming eyes And grovellings on the ground; Who joins the flats of Time and Chance Behind the prey preferred, And thrones on Shrieking Circumstance The Sacredly Absurd, Till Laughter, voiceless through excess, Waves mute appeal and sore, Above the midriff's deep distress, For breath to laugh once more. No creed hath dared to hail Him Lord, No raptured choirs proclaim, And Nature's strenuous Overword Hath nowhere breathed His Name. Yet, it must be, on wayside jape, The selfsame Power bestows The selfsame power as went to shape His Planet or His Rose.
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