Darkness
Lines:82Movement:Romanticism
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.The bright sun was extinguished, and the starsDid wander darkling in the eternal space,Rayless, and pathless, and the icy EarthSwung blind and blackening in the moonless air;Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,And men forgot their passions in the dreadOf this their desolation; and all heartsWere chilled into a selfish prayer for light:And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,The palaces of crownéd kings--the huts,The habitations of all things which dwell,Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,And men were gathered round their blazing homesTo look once more into each other's face;Happy were those who dwelt within the eyeOf the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:A fearful hope was all the World contained;Forests were set on fire--but hour by hourThey fell and faded--and the crackling trunksExtinguished with a crash--and all was black.The brows of men by the despairing lightWore an unearthly aspect, as by fitsThe flashes fell upon them; some lay downAnd hid their eyes and wept; and some did restTheir chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;And others hurried to and fro, and fedTheir funeral piles with fuel, and looked upWith mad disquietude on the dull sky,The pall of a past World; and then againWith curses cast them down upon the dust,And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutesCame tame and tremulous; and vipers crawledAnd twined themselves among the multitude,Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food:And War, which for a moment was no more,Did glut himself again:--a meal was boughtWith blood, and each sate sullenly apartGorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;All earth was but one thought--and that was Death,Immediate and inglorious; and the pangOf famine fed upon all entrails--menDied, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;The meagre by the meagre were devoured,Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,And he was faithful to a corse, and keptThe birds and beasts and famished men at bay,Till hunger clung them, or the dropping deadLured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,But with a piteous and perpetual moan,And a quick desolate cry, licking the handWhich answered not with a caress--he died.The crowd was famished by degrees; but twoOf an enormous city did survive,And they were enemies: they met besideThe dying embers of an altar-placeWhere had been heaped a mass of holy thingsFor an unholy usage; they raked up,And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton handsThe feeble ashes, and their feeble breathBlew for a little life, and made a flameWhich was a mockery; then they lifted upTheir eyes as it grew lighter, and beheldEach other's aspects--saw, and shrieked, and died--Even of their mutual hideousness they died,Unknowing who he was upon whose browFamine had written Fiend. The World was void,The populous and the powerful was a lump,Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,And nothing stirred within their silent depths;Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they droppedThey slept on the abyss without a surge--The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;The winds were withered in the stagnant air,And the clouds perished; Darkness had no needOf aid from them--She was the Universe.