THE BEGINNING
Great spheres of fire, to which the sun is nought,
Pass thund'ring round our world. A golden mist—
The margin to the universe—falls round
The verges of our vision. Rocks ablaze
Leap upward to the sun, or fall beneath
The rush of our rapidity, that seems
Catastrophy, and not the joyous birth
Of yet another star. The air is full
Of clashing colour, full of sights and sounds
Too plain and loud for men to heed or hear,
The cosmic cries of pain that follow birth:
A multi-coloured world.
The scorching heat
Surpasses all the equatorial days:
Steam rises from the surface of the sea.
Gigantic rainbow mists resemble forms
That bring to mind strange elemental sprites
Exulting in the chaos of creation.
They glide above the tumult-ridden sea
Which now is shaken as are autumn leaves;
Great hollows open and reveal its depths—
Devoid of any form of life or death.
Till wave on wave it gathers strength again
And shakes a mountain, splits it to the base
(Still weak from struggle as a new-born babe).
Then night comes on, and shows the flaming path
Of all the rocks that vainly seek the sun.
Broad as the arch of space, a myriad moons
Sail slowly by the sea; the glowing world
Shows up the pallor of their ivory.
The din grows greater from the universe:
There rises up the smell of fire and iron,—
Not dreary like the smell of burnt-out things,
But like the smell of some gigantic forge—
Cheerful, of good intent, and full of life.
Now all the joyous cries of sea and earth,
The universal harmonies of birth,
Rise up to haunt the slumber of their God.
THE END
Round the great ruins crawl those things of slime
Green ruins lichenous and scarred by moss—
An evil lichen that proclaims world doom,
Like blood dried brown upon a dead man's face.
And nothing moves save those monstrosities,
Armoured and grey, and of a monster size.
But now, a thing passed through the cloying air
With flap and clatter of its scaly wings—
As if the whole world echoed from some storm.
One scarce could see it in the dim green light
Till suddenly it swooped and made a dart
And brushed away one of those things of slime,
Just as a hawk might sweep upon its prey.
It seems as if the light grows dimmer yet—
No radiance from the dreadful green above,
Only a lustrous light or iridescence
As if from off a carrion-fly,—surrounds
That vegetation which is never touched
By any breeze. The air is thick, and brings
The tainted subtle sweetness of decay.
Where, yonder, lies the noisome river-course,
There shows a faintly phosphorescent glow.
Long writhing bodies fall and twist and rise,
And one can hear them playing in the mud.
Upon the ruined walls there gleam and shine
The track of those grey vast monstrosities—
As some gigantic snail had crawled along.
All round the shining bushes waver lines
Suggesting shadows, slight and grey, but full
Of that which makes one nigh to dead with fear.
Watch how those awful shadows culminate
And dance in one long wish to hurt the world.