The Star-Treader and Other Poems

It seemed that from the west

The live red flame of sunset,

Eating the dead blue sky

And cold insensate peaks,

Was loosened slowly, and fell.

Above it, a few red stars

Burned down like low candle-flames

Into the gaunt black sockets

Of the chill insensible mountains.

But in the ascendant skies

(Cloudless, like some vast corpse

Unfeatured, cerementless)

Succeeded nor star nor planet.

It may have been that black,

Pulseless, dead stars arose

And crossed as of old the heavens.

But came no living orb,

Nor comet seeming the ghost,

Homeless, of an outcast world,

Seeking its former place

That is no more nor shall be

In all the Cosmos again.

Null, blank, and meaningless

As a burnt scroll that blackens

With the passing of the fire,

Lay the dead infinite sky.

Lo! in the halls of Time,

I thought, the torches are out—

The revelry of the gods,

Or lamentation of demons

For which their flames were lit,

Over and quiet at last

With the closing peace of night,

Whose dumb, dead, passionless skies

Enfold the living world

As the sea a sinking pebble.