I had a vision, not all a vision, I knew;
For in this world of strangeness, the sun had fled,
And stars, once fixed, now wandered lost and few,
Pathless, and rayless, in the sky of lead.

The frozen earth, it swung, blind and blackened,
In moonless air, with no hope of reprieve;
Days passed and went, and yet no light had beckoned,
Hearts forgot their passions in the abyss of grief.

Their hearts froze into selfish prayers for light,
As they lived by watchfires, no hope in sight;
The palaces of kings, and huts as one,
Were burnt for beacons, and cities fell undone.

People gathered round their homes, once filled with joy,
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who lived near the volcano’s ploy,
As mountains served to light the human race.

Forests were set ablaze, yet fell and faded,
With trunks that cracked and extinguished with a crash;
And in the end, all was black, nothing created,
With brows of men by despairing light, ashen and brash.

Some lay down and wept, and others smiled,
While some did rest their chins upon clenched hands;
And others hurried, fed the funeral piles,
With fuel, and looked up with mad disquietude on the dull sky’s demands.

The wildest brutes came tame and tremulous,
And vipers twined amongst the multitude;
Hissing but stingless, they were slain for sustenance,
And War, which for a moment ceased, consumed again with its renewed attitude.

All earth was but one thought, and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious, with famine to feed;
The meagre were devoured by the meagre, no breath,
And men died, tombless, with no chance to heed.

Even dogs assail’d their masters, but one stayed true,
And faithful to the corpse, kept the birds and beasts at bay;
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead,
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, but with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand,
Which answered not with a caress—he died.

Only two of an enormous city survived,
And they were enemies, who met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place, deprived,
Where a mass of holy things had been heaped, for unholy usage in disguise.

They scraped with their cold skeleton hands,
The feeble ashes, and blew for a little life,
Which was a mockery, until the light,
Grew stronger, and they beheld each other’s strife.

Each saw and shrieked, and died,
Even in their mutual hideousness they perished;
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow,
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and oceans stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal, as they slept
On the abyss without a surge, for waves were dead;
The tides were in their grave, and the moon,
Their mistress, had expired before, leaving darkness,
Which needed no aid from clouds that perish’d soon.
She was the Universe, a shadow of emptiness.