THE staring vessels of these worlds no wine
Of Life refills, no seeds of potent change.
So may Death's pale and lingering weeds entwine
These hollow globes that still unhindered range
Through Heaven. O famished Time! thy jaws devour
The suns and slumbers of the broken spheres,
Whose knell young stars have heard, whose rounded hour
Strikes, and is buried in thy bourneless years.
They glow like fevered jewels in the deeps,
Like sullen embers in remorseless Night,
Like flowers with'ring when the Winter creeps
With iron dews their little lives to blight.
Since recordless immensities of Time
I stand whose ne'er-sealed eyes the birth behold
Of worlds dream-born,--their fiery infant clime,
Their teeming life, their epochs gray and cold,
Peace kiss and blot their tarnished light and close
Their leaden urns with gentleness. I shed
The ashes of my silence on their snows,--
Then waft them to my kingdoms of the dead.
Through the doomed Sun runs a tremor from core to crust. There is
a faltering in his flight.
His vassal globes roll on, disturbed and bleak.
The Lord of Day shakes upon his central seat and turns up his
hectic front in dumb questionings of despair. He yearns for sleep
to seal his kingly eye.
The calcined wounds upon him are like many mouths. They roll forth
trembling thunder.
And now is heard the voice of the Sun in agony: