SONG OF EARTH THE ELEMENT
SPRUNG molten from the fierce embrace of stars,
Graven by hungry seas and winds and fires--
Lo, my poor frame terrene with all its scars
Lies arid like the dross of blasted pyres!
Opulent fields and fruits, and forest tracts--
O fourfold largess of the seasons! grain,
Once on this bosom waving! cataracts
Poured from my heart!--each precious living vein
Of gold or gleaming mineral, and flower
And grass and mated creature that I gave
To man unstinted from my royal dower,
Lie cold in this my never-sated grave.
And he, my noblest offspring, whom my breasts
Suckled when ushered from my fertile womb,
Lies low in dark and underearthen nests,
Calling on slow and silent-footed doom.
No more, no more the joyous spring shall thaw
These crystal cere-cloths from my withered heart,--
No more shall Life his golden pageant draw,
Nor ever a seed shall spring nor a flower start.
The all-embracing and tender Air is without motion, lifeless and exhaust.
His eight lordly sons lie undone in eight far regions of the globe.
Thinner and thinner grows the element as it is drained away to dissolution.
Meteors from the outer vast pierce, unconsumed, the canopy of the dying Air. The helpless Earth is smitten with showers of fire-javelins.
Sighs suffuse the atmosphere and putrescence rises with its legions of leaden ghosts.
What is this sound, so low, so faint, so thin? It seems like the first whisper of the youngest of all the Angels, or the last sigh of the oldest of all Men.
It is the Song of the dying Air.