The ultimate interrogative

What is truth? What is love?
What is life? O God in heaven above
if such there be, come down now
I do implore, for if not - how?
And why? And where? If only I could tell!
But no - for I am only human. What bell,
ringing eternally of truth
could ’waken me from life - the uncouth?

Ring on! Ring on dear friend -
ring on ’til eternity shall end.
What then? What now?
Oh, such laughter! Yet I vow
those peals are driving me insane:
and then, ’though hearing, I am deaf again.
Asleep to all the world am I,
here yet living, here I die.

What is this? How can it be
that all these things converge on me?
Sunshine, Moonlight,
rain, hail and snow - I fight
a nightmare uncontrolled in real life,
a battlefield of intellectual strife!
Who will dare to raise his head
and say "I wish that I were dead!"

Why should I live? Why should I die?
And who decides my fate? - I,
a mere wretched human being
must surely have a destiny, but seeing
what I am upon this earth,
I can name nought that I am worth.
Such futile things, these are we;
yet what else is there to be?

Once faith was my only virtue:
now it seems I’ve lost that too.
If only life could simply be explained
my mind would rest, no longer pained
by catastrophic thoughts as now.
Yet many think not of why or how
they ever were created,
and what when they’ve departed.

Such apathetic creatures are these,
with minds of grasshoppers and bees;
perhaps if I should act as they
I too will find happiness some day.
Yet how could I so do,
forsaking the little I know as true?
’Tis better I should die unhappy in my quest
than live a happy, apathetic jest.