It's what I know! —
A tadpole and a rocket! — My dear God,
And I can still laugh out! — What do you think
Your tadpole's made of? What lets your rocket fling
Those streaming sparks across the half of night,
Splashing the burning spray of its haste among
The quiet business of the other stars?
Ay, that's a fiery jet it leaves behind
In such enormous drift! What sort of fire
Is spouted so, spouted and never quenching? —
There is no name for that star's fire: it is
The fire that was before the world was made,
The fire that all the things we live among
Remember being; and whitest fire we know
Is its poor copy in their dreaming trance!
Huff:
That would be hell fire.
Dowser:
Ay, if you like, hell fire,
Hell fire flying through the night! 'Twould be
A thing to blink about, a blast of it
Swept in your face, eh? and a thing to set
The whole stuff of the earth smoking rarely?
Which of you said 'the heat's a wonder to-night'?
You have not done with marvelling. There'll come
A night when all your clothes are a pickle of sweat,
And, for all that, the sweat on your salty skin
Shall dry and crack, in the breathing of a wind
That's like a draught come through an open'd furnace.
The leafage of the trees shall brown and faint,
All sappy growth turning to brittle rubbish
As the near heat of the star strokes the green earth;
And time shall brush the fields as visibly
As a rough hand brushes against the nap
Of gleaming cloth — killing the season's colour,
Each hour charged with the wasting of a year;
And sailors panting on their warping decks
Will watch the sea steam like broth about them.
You'll know what I know then! — That towering star
Hangs like a fiery buzzard in the night
Intent over our earth — Ay, now his journey
Points, straight as a plummet's drop, down to us!
Huff:
Why, that's the end of the world!
Dowser:
You've said it now.
Sollers: