THEY are dying! all are dying! Night shall force
Us headlong through her shoreless regions blind.
Then must I, an empty lamp, around the corse
Of Earth my dark, unending spirals wind.
I loved the Sun. My heart was molten stone,
Like Earth my face for him with beauty bloomed,
Ere lust and hatred scarred my every zone,
And passion tore my beauty and consumed.
They are dying! I have waited lone and long,--
Long have hung, a warning skull that gleamed
Above their feast of Life and Love;--their song
Is ended, and the Sun sheds blood. They dreamed.
Earth that called me cold and pale, grows pale and cold,--
Now wearily her groaning axle turns
Those alternating glories that she rolled
To mock my ashen tombs and crater-urns!
No more her midnight ghouls nor lovers creep
To curse or bless my light; my shadow crawls
Like some dark moth upon her. I shall sleep
Equal with her in death. The tyrant falls!
The Element of Earth, waste and inert, hears at last the cry
of the Mother-globe.
Her crests and peaks, her vales and plains, lie white and whelmed
with snow.
The mountain ranges draw their icy shrouds over the faces of dead
continents.
A convulsion seizes on her granite heart, and the lips of her
hills are heard uttering their dirge.