Nature's questions come from Swinburne's Hertha
One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free.
The unnamed speaker is identifiable through Swinburne's Hertha, first published in Songs before Sunrise (1871). Its personified earth asks, ‘Was not I enough beautiful? / Was it hard to be free?’ (lines 173–174). Chesterton converts these consecutive questions into indirect speech. The inspected University of Toronto text follows Collected Poetical Works (Heinemann, 1924), I, pp. 732–740; it is a later witness, not the 1871 printing.
The surrounding stanza addresses children devoted to alien gods and insists that the speaking power exists within them. The poem ends by identifying humanity with that power (lines 171–175, 191–200). Thus ‘Nature’ here means more than attractive scenery: the poem supplies an encompassing alternative to a separate creator. Chesterton's contrast places this emancipating poetic voice beside Huxley's exposure of religious consolation. Recovering the poem also identifies Swinburne before Chesterton explicitly names him at the paragraph's end; it does not establish that Swinburne accepted Chesterton's label ‘agnostic.’
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