Night.
Chaos, of old, was God's dominion;
'Twas His belovèd child, His own first-born;
And He was agèd ere the thought of morn
Shook the sheer steeps of black Oblivion.
Then all the works of darkness being done
Through countless æons hopelessly forlorn,
Out to the very utmost verge and bourn,
God at the last, reluctant, made the sun.
He loved His darkness still, for it was old:
He grieved to see His eldest child take flight;
And when His Fiat lux the death-knell tolled,
As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled,
He snatched a remnant flying into light
And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night.
L. Mifflin.
He Made the Stars Also.
Vast hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach
Of suns, their legions withering at His nod,
Died into day hearing the voice of God;
And seas new made, immense and furious, each
Plunged and rolled forward, feeling for a beach;
He walked the waters with effulgence shod.
This being made, He yearned for worlds to make
From other chaos out beyond our night—
For to create is still God's prime delight.
The large moon, all alone, sailed her dark lake,
And the first tides were moving to her might;
Then Darkness trembled, and began to quake
Big with the birth of stars, and when He spake
A million worlds leapt into radiant light!
L. Mifflin.