The Star-Treader and other poems Part 9

The world upheld their pillars for awhile-- Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood, The hot wind sifts across the solitude The sand that once was wall and peristyle, Or furrows like the main each desert mile, Where ocean-deep above its ancient food Of cities fame-forgot, the waste is nude, Traceless as billows of each sunken pile.

Lo! for that wrong shall vengeance come at last, When the devouring earth, in ruin one With royal walls and palaces undone, And sunk within the desolated past, Shall drift, and winds that wrangle through the vast Immingle it with ashes of the sun.

SATURN

Now were the t.i.tans gathered round their king, In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge Of drear extremities that clasp the world-- A land half-moulded by the hasty G.o.ds, And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars, Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone; Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood, Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak Among the lesser hills that guard its base.

Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold, Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments.

A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice Of phantom hosts--hurried, importunate, And intermittent with a tightening fear.

Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds, Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces In which to make the fetters of the world.

Seared by the lightning of the younger G.o.ds, They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills, Those levins thrust like spears into the heart Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky Like severing swords. Then, as the t.i.tans watched, The night rose like a black, enormous mist Around them, wherein naught was visible Save the sharp levin leaping in the north; And no sound came, except of seas remote, That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts Of Matter.

Till the moon, discovering That harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld, Lit with illusory fire each t.i.tan's form, They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs-- The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts, And in the slow withdrawal of the tide Safe for awhile. Small solace did they take From that frore radiance glistering on the dull Black desert gripped in iron silences, Like a false triumph o'er contestless fates, Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death.

Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice Seeming the soul of that tremendous land Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars.

"O t.i.tans, G.o.ds, sustainers of the world, Is this the end? Must Earth go down to Chaos, Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed sway Of G.o.dlings vain, precipitate with youth, Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance, To bind their will as reins upon the sun, Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens?

Must we behold, with eyes of impotence That universal wrack, even though it whelm These our usurpers in impartial doom Beneath the shards and fragments of the world?

Were it not preferable to return, And meeting them in fight unswervable, Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes, One sacrifice unto the G.o.ds of Chaos?

Why should we stay, and live the tragedy Of power that survives its use?"

Now spake Enceladus, when that the echoings Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star; "Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf, Like to a stone a curious child might cast To test the fall of some dark precipice?

Patience and caution should we take as mail, Not rashness for a weapon--too keen sword That cuts the strained knot of destiny, Ne'er to be tied again. Were it not best To watch the slow procedure of the days, That we may grasp a time more opportune, When desperation is not all our strength, Nor the foe newly filled with victory?

Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm For thee, not for the G.o.ds of nothingness."

He ceased, and after him no lesser G.o.d Gave voice upon the shaken silences, None venturing to risk comparison, Inevitable then, of eloquence With his; but silence like the ambiguousness Of signal and of lesser stars o'ercast And merged in one confusion by the moon, Possessed that mult.i.tude, till Saturn rose.

Around his form the light intensified, And strengthened with addition wild and strange, Investing him as with a phantom robe, And gathering like a crown about his brow.

His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust He took, and dipping it within the moon, Made clean its length of blade, and from it cast Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound.

And his resurgent power, in glance and word, Poured through the t.i.tans' souls, and was become The fountains of their own, and at his flame Their fires were lit once more, whose restlessness Leapt and aspired against the steadfast stars.

And now they turned, majestic with resolve, Where, red upon the forefront of the north, Arcturus was a beacon to the winds.

And with the flickering winds, that lightly struck The desert dust, then sprang again in air, They pa.s.sed athwart the foreland of the north.

Against their march they saw the shrunken waste, A rivelled region like a world grown old Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of Life In all its epoch; or a world that was The nurse of infant Death, ere he became Too large, too strong for its restraining arms, And towered athwart the suns.

And there they crossed Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields, But gave not to their tread, and clanging plains Like body-mail of greater, vaster G.o.ds.

Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon, They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind, Seeming the mirth of death; and 'neath their gaze Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair.

Yet strode they on, through the moon's fantasies, Bold with resolve, across a land like doubt.

And now they pa.s.sed among huge mountain-bulks, Themselves like peaks detached, and moving slow 'Mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom To that mute conclave great against the stars.

Emerging thence, the t.i.tans marched where still Their own portentous shadows went before Like night that fled but shrunk not, dusking all That desert way.

And thus they came where Sleep, The sleep of weary victory, had seized The younger G.o.ds as captives, borne beyond All flight of mounting battle-ecstasies In that high triumph of forgetfulness.

And on that sleep the striding t.i.tans broke, Vague and immense at first like forming dreams To those disturbed G.o.ds, in mist of drowse Purblind and doubtful yet, though soon they knew Their erst-defeated foes, and rising stood In silent ranks expectant, that appeared To move, with shaking of astonished fires That bristled forth, or were displayed like plumes Late folded close, now trembling terribly, Pending between the desert and the stars.

Then, sudden as the waking from a dream, The battle leapt, where striving shapes of G.o.ds Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air, Sweeping it to a froth of fire; and all That ancient, deep-established desert rocked, Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs Of gathered and impatient Chaos, while, Above the place where central battle burned The stars drew back in fright or dazzlement, Paling to more secluded distances.

Lo, where the moon had wrought illusive dreams That clothed the wild in doubt and fantasy, Hiding its hideousness with bright mirage, Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of h.e.l.l, Mightier confusion, chaos absolute Upon the imperilled sky and trembling world, Now made a certainty within itself, The one thing sure in shaken sky or world.

Maelstroms of battle caught in storms of fire, Torn and involved by weaponry of G.o.ds-- Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields; Grappling of shapes, seen through the riven blaze An instant, then once more obscure, and known Only by giant heavings of that war Of furious G.o.ds and roused elements, Divided, leagued, contending evermore Along the desert--these, augmentative Round one thick center, stunned the faltering night.

So huge that chaos, complicate within With movements of gigantic legionry, Antagonistic streams, impetuous-hurled Where Jove and Saturn thunder-crested, led In fight unswervable--so wide the strife Of differing impulse, that Decision found No foothold, till that first confusion should In ordered conflict re-arrange, and stand With its true forces known. This seemed remote, With that wide struggle pending terribly, As if all-various, colored Time had made A truce with white Eternity, and both Stood watching from afar.

Through drifts of haze The broadening moon, made ominous with red, Glared from the westering night. And now that war Built for itself, far up, a cope of cloud, And drew it down, far off, upon all sides, Impervious to the moon and sworded stars.

And by their own wild light the G.o.ds fought on 'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky Filled and illumed with glare of bursting suns.

And cast by their own light, upon that sky The G.o.ds' own shadows moved like shapen gloom, Phantasmagoric, changed and amplified, A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully In spectral battle indecisive. Then, Swift, as it had begun, the contest turned, And on the heaving t.i.tans' ma.s.sive front It seemed that all the motion and the strength Self-thwarting and confounded, of that strife, Was flung in centered impact terrible, With rush of all that fire, tempestuous-blown As if before some wind of further s.p.a.ce, Striking the earth. Lo, all the t.i.tans' flame Bent back upon themselves, and they were hurled In vaster disarray, with vanguard piled On rear and center. Saturn could not stem The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat; He, with his host, was but as drift thereon, Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world.

Hurling like slanted rain, the lurid levin Fell o'er that flight of t.i.tans, and behind, In striding menace, all-victorious Jove Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned And footed with the winds. In that defeat, With Jove's pursuit involved and manifold, Few found escape unscathed, and some went down Like senile suns that grapple with the dark, And reel in flame tremendous, and are still.

Ebbing, the battle left those elder G.o.ds Upcast once more on coasts of black defeat-- Gripped in despair, a vaster Tartarus.

The victor G.o.ds, their storms and thunders spent, Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds, And where the lingering haze of fight dissolved, The pallor of the dawn began to spread On darkness purple like the pain of Death.

Ringed with that desolation, Saturn stood Mute, and the t.i.tans answered unto him With brother silence. Motionless, they seemed Some peristyle or range of columns great, Alone enduring of a fallen fane In deserts of some vaster world whence Life And Faith have vanished long, that vaguely slips To an immemoried end. And twilight slow Crept round those lofty shapes august, and seemed Such as might be the faltering ghostly noon Of mightier suns that totter down to death.

Then turned they, pa.s.sing from that dismal place Blasted anew with battle, ere the swift Striding of light athwart stupendous chasms And wasteful plains, should overtake them there, Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat.

Slowly they turned, and pa.s.sed upon the west Where, like a weariness immovable In menace huge, the plain its monstrous bulk, The peaks its hydra heads, the whole world crouched Against their march with the diminished stars.

FINIS

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 pa.s.sing of the fire, Lay the dead infinite sky.

Lo! in the halls of Time, I thought, the torches are out-- The revelry of the G.o.ds, Or lamentation of demons For which their flames were lit, Over and quiet at last With the closing peace of night, Whose dumb, dead, pa.s.sionless skies Enfold the living world As the sea a sinking pebble.