I, born of sound and foam,Child of the sea and wind,Was fire upon mankind—Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome.Time fanned me with his breath;Love found new warmth in me,And Life its ecstasy,Till I grew deadly with the wind of death.A NYMPHHow can the world be still so beautifulWhen beauty's self is fled? Tis like the muteAnd marble loveliness of some dead girl;And we that hover here, are as the spiritOf former voice and motion, and live colorIn that which shall not stir nor speak again.ANOTHER NYMPHNay, rather say this lovely, lifeless worldIs but a rigid semblance, counterfeitingThe world which was. Nor have the gods retainedSuch power as once informed and rendered vitalThe cryptic irresponsiveness of stone,—That statue which Pygmalion made and loved.ATÈI, who was discord among men,Alone of all Time's hierarchyFind that Time hath no need of me,No lack that I might fill again.THE POETTell me, O gods, are ye forever doomedTo fall and flutter among spacial winds,Finding release nor foothold anywhere—Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spiritsWhose names are blotted from the lists of Time,Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed?THE GODS TOGETHERThroneless, discrowned, and impotent,In man's sad disillusionment,We passed with Earth's returnless youth,Who were the semblances of truth,The veils that hid the vacantnessInfinite, naked, meaningless,The blank and universal SphinxEach world beholds at last—and sinks.New gods protect awhile the gazeOf man—each one a veil that stays—Till the new gods, discredited,Like mist that melts with noon, are fledThat power oppressive, limitless,The tyranny of nothingness.Our power is dead upon the earthWith the first dews and dawns of Time;But in the far and younger climeOf other worlds, it hath re-birth.Yea, though we find not entrance here—Astray like feathers on the wind,To neither earth nor heaven consigned—Fresh altars in a distant sphereAre keen with fragrance, bright with fire,New hearths to warm us from the night,Till, banished thence, we pass in flightWhile all the flames of dream expire.
A SUNSET
As blood from some enormous hurtThe sanguine sunset leapt;Across it, like a dabbled skirt,The hurrying tempest swept.