What of the Immanent Will and its designs?
It works unconsciously as heretofore,
External artistries in circumstance.

In Hardy’s late poetry, “Immanent Will” names an impersonal, non-moral force that seems to underlie events—akin to blind fate or indifferent natural law rather than a providential deity. The speaker’s question (“What of…its designs?”) is answered bleakly: whatever shapes human lives does so “unconsciously,” not with intention or care. “External artistries in circumstance” suggests that life can look patterned—almost as if composed by an artist—yet those patterns arise from circumstance, chance, and necessity, not from a conscious planner. The lines crystallize Hardy’s characteristic tragic skepticism: meaning and design appear in retrospect, but the universe itself is not meaningfully “designing” for human ends.