Will we merely drill a hole
Through the trailing aureole?
Or will the prediction dire
Of a world destroyed by fire
Be fulfilled?
Shall we crook our knees and pray
Counting this the Judgment Day?
Or preserve a cosmic ca’m,
Caring not a cosmic dam
What may come?
There’s the rub. If we but knew
We should know just what to do.
Yes is just as good as No
To all questions. Here we go!—
Hang on tight!
THE MORNING AFTER
(May 19, 1910.)
Here we are, friends, whole and hale
In or through the comet’s tail;
And as far as we can say,
Matters are about as they
Were before.
Everything is much the same
As before the comet came.
Grasses grow and waters run—
Nothing new beneath the sun—
Same old sphere.
Life is drab or life is gay,
Thorny path or primrose way;
All is common, all is strange;
“Down the ringing grooves of change”
Spins the world.