Darkness
- 1I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
- 2The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
- 3Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
- 4Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
- 5Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
- 6Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
- 7And men forgot their passions in the dread
- 8Of this their desolation; and all hearts
- 9Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
- 10And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
- 11The palaces of crownéd kings--the huts,
- 12The habitations of all things which dwell,
- 13Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
- 14And men were gathered round their blazing homes
- 15To look once more into each other's face;
- 16Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
- 17Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
- 18A fearful hope was all the World contained;
- 19Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
- 20They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
- 21Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.
- 22The brows of men by the despairing light
- 23Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
- 24The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
- 25And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
- 26Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
- 27And others hurried to and fro, and fed
- 28Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
- 29With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
- 30The pall of a past World; and then again
- 31With curses cast them down upon the dust,
- 32And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
- 33And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
- 34And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
- 35Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
- 36And twined themselves among the multitude,
- 37Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food:
- 38And War, which for a moment was no more,
- 39Did glut himself again:--a meal was bought
- 40With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
- 41Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
- 42All earth was but one thought--and that was Death,
- 43Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
- 44Of fed upon all entrails--men
- 45Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
- 46The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
- 47Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
- 48And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
- 49The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
- 50Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
- 51Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
- 52But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
- 53And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
- 54Which answered not with a caress--he died.
- 55The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
- 56Of an enormous city did survive,
- 57And they were enemies: they met beside
- 58The dying embers of an altar-place
- 59Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
- 60For an unholy usage; they raked up,
- 61And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
- 62The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
- 63Blew for a little life, and made a flame
- 64Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
- 65Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
- 66Each other's aspects--saw, and shrieked, and died--
- 67Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
- 68Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
- 69Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
- 70The populous and the powerful was a lump,
- 71Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
- 72A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
- 73The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
- 74And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
- 75Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
- 76And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
- 77They slept on the abyss without a surge--
- 78The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
- 79The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
- 80The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
- 81And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
- 82Of aid from them--She was the Universe.