ON the brooding breast of the empty Dark,
ere ever the world was made,
When the Gods were asleep in a realm of rest,
half-buried ’twixt Light and Shade;
A Spirit arose on the vasty air.--a glorious
Spirit of fire,--
A wingèd Marvel, whose eyes were bright
with the flame of a new desire;
Crown’d with a thousand stars he stood
in a halo of burning beams,
And lifting his passionate voice he roused the Gods
from their idle dreams.
Up they started, those massive Shapes,
and with swift creative hands,
They parted the darkness, let loose the light,
and fashioned the seas and lands;
Great forests sprang from the teeming soil,
with grasses and glory-flowers,
And minutes were made of jewel-points
that glittered into Hours;
Out whirled the planets like silver ships
in the sapphire depths of Heaven
And the Sun and Moon were born like babes from
the marriage of Morn and Even.
Down through the skies fled the Spirit of Flame,
and piercing the new earth-clods,
Drew vapours thence which slowly up-grew into
forms that were like the Gods;
Vacant and empty of soul and sense, impotent
creatures were they,
Till thrilled by the burning touch of Love,
they lived in the light of Day--
Lived, each one, for the breathing space of
threescore years and ten,
And swore they were more than the Gods themselves,
--these Shadows called women and men!
Then weary grew the Spirit of Fire, and rising on
radiant wings,
He fled away from the whirling dance of his brief
created things--
Earth’s black and sterile globe swung round on
an edge of circling cold,
And the Sun was drowned in a spherical sea of
moveless frozen gold--
The Gods departed and drowsed again by Life’s
full-flowing river,
But the world they had made with a Breath of Flame had
passed from their thoughts for ever!