The saddest of all her twilights has fallen and is moving on to night.
Life, be it of man, or beast, or flower, is slowly quenched, as a torch is quenched in a midnight lake.
The haunts and habitations of men have vanished; they are not any more. Yet their ruins are heaped with snow that shall know no thawing.
Every hour of Earth is an eon and her day has yet many hours.
Her elements sing each their song. The parent Earth sends forth her cry into the void.
SONG OF THE PLANET EARTH
NOT now thy beams arouse me morn by morn,
O Sun! as when my flesh was warm and young.
Out of our love what children fair were born
To rapture! ere thy last wild song was sung.
I deem thy day is Night and thou the Moon--
So feeble is thy kiss, so cold thy light,--
Lamp of my life, alas!--how soon, how soon--
O speak! comes thy last greeting and good-night?
My breasts are sere as sand, no flowers bloom,
No grass, no forests hide my misery bare;
The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume
Those gardens of delight we made so fair,
And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race,
Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane,
Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face,
Nor tomb them in my hollow caves of pain.
Soon shall I creep no more about thee, orb
Of Heaven, for all my thews grow stark and dry.
When the years drag me to my end--absorb,
Embrace, enfold, caress me, ere I die!
A song fours down from the skies, a plangent song of triumph from the Moon. Yet it is not her voice, but that of the Moon Wraith. She reigns in mockery and malice upon her peaks in gulfs of solitude.
She sings for her who perished long ago. Her voice is flung exulting over the ruins.