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wly they turned, and passed 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 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.