Earth’s black and sterile globe swung round on an edge of circling cold,
And the Sun was drowned in a spherical sea of moveless frozen gold—
The Gods departed and drowsed again by Life’s full-flowing river,
But the world they had made with a Breath of Flame had passed from their thoughts for ever!
THE DEVIL’S MOTOR
A FANTASY
In the dead midnight, at that supreme moment when the Hours that are past slip away from the grasp of the Hours yet to be, there came rushing between Earth and Heaven the sound of giant wheels,—the glare of great lights,—the stench and the muffled roar of a huge Car, tearing at full speed along the pale line dividing the Darkness from the Dawn. And he who stood within the Car, steering it straight onward, was clothed in black and crowned with fire; large bat-like wings flared out on either side of him in woven webs of smoke and flame, and his face was white as bleached bone. Like glowing embers his eyes burned in their cavernous sockets, shedding terrific glances through the star-strewn space,—and on his thin lips there was a frozen shadow of a smile more cruel than hate,—more deadly than despair.