Impercipient

No one can read _The Impercipient_ without recognizing that Mr. Hardy's atheism is as honest and as sincere as the religious faith of others, and that no one regrets the blankness of his universe more than he.

The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century William Lyon Phelps 1904

The obsession of old age, with its physical decay ( "I look into my glass"), the inevitable division which leads to that isolation which the poet regards as the greatest of adversities ( "The Impercipient"), the tragedies of moral indecision, the contrast between the tangible earth and the bodyless ghosts, and endless repetition of the cry, "Why find we us here?" and of the question "Has some Vast Imbecility framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?"

Some Diversions of a Man of Letters Edmund Gosse 1888