Questions — Summary

A speaker watches an ox peacefully eating grass and feels a sudden awe at the animal’s strength and life. She asks who built its powerful body and set its heart beating, as if the ox’s ordinary existence hides a sacred mystery. But the second half of the poem turns uneasy. Looking at the same ox now patiently waiting for death, the speaker wonders why a creature without a soul should be made to feel pain and anguish. If death offers the ox no afterlife, no new creation, then its suffering seems cruelly pointless. The mood shifts from calm reverence to quiet, almost accusing sorrow, leaving the sense of someone troubled by the unfairness of animal suffering and speaking with sympathy rather than detached curiosity.