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87

V. DEATH.

“The crowning Deed, 'tis done! the deed of Death!
Ye Demigods, whose place on earth is blank,
Whose fame and name no poet uttereth;
Ye Desolators of heroick rank;
Own your Outdoer,...shamed and silent be!
—Who ruleth the down-rushing Avalanch?
Loosed by a whisper, or a breath too free,
Descending in its brightness terribly,
With the noise of torrents...it obeyeth me.
—I ride upon the Glacier, and do fly,
Yea I come flying on the winged wind;
And my pavilion of the snow pile I,
And wonne among the mountains, 'till I mind
To come abroad; then I wend on my way
Precipitous in lightning, though not tined
From heaven surcharged, but kindling, as it may,
About my secret place, where royally
Dwelleth the hiding of my power, whose sway,
Felt only, doth abide invisibly,
And is in that it is, like to a god
Which lives but in his proper energy.
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—The floods leap under me, and foam aloud,
And bear me onward, gathering as I go,
And armies come unto me from the cloud.
I triumph in my chariot of the snow...
Forth utter I my voice,...the thunder peals:
Forth from my sanctuary I rush, and, lo,
Forests confess me, nor the vale conceals
My presence,...and the village vanisheth;
Ruin to my pleased ear man's shriek reveals,
Silence, Depopulation.—I am Death!
—A home in Air have I. Winds hear my voice,
The four winds answer it with all their breath.—
—Lo! the Tornado doth aloud rejoice
In his ubiquity, and cometh out
With sudden and exaggerated noise;
Scattering his hurtling arrows all about
Amid the sky, the while his iron shoon
Cottage and Palace trample;..with a shout,
Then whirls him in his dusty car aboon,
As with the ruin he would blot out heaven,
And quench the glorious sun,—as I shall soon.
And men are hurled into the clouds, and driven
As in a witch-dance, round, and aye around,
And perish in the flashes of the leven;
I swoop, and strangle them in that dire swound,
For sport;—and thus I gambol merrily.
—My way is on the Waters. Of the Drowned
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The last spasm makes the globule, wherewith I
Take innocent delight, and think when this
Strong hand shall, with the same facility,
Confound in one disruption, one abyss,
A bubble and a world. I dance—I dance—
Around the circles of the Vortices,
And see the ship go down in a strong trance,
And hear the shriek,—one, yet how manifold!
There, where the steeds o'the Tempest foam and prance,
Am I;—their wild manes o'er the wild surge rolled,
Like fire-flakes, wreathe the billows, and their neigh
Doth chide the clarion-clang of Ocean old.
—I dash amidst them, eager for the fray;
Doth plunge my Charger with me; he doth swim,
Wild in his fierceness, through the flashing spray;
As if a lightning-stroke had blinded him,
And darted phrenzy to his brain, and he
Were maddened with the torture in each limb,
And sweat' and shrieked in sightless agony,
And made huge havock in his maniack might,
Till his heart burst. Then on the exhausted sea
The waves drop down, and, in the dull twilight,
Lay sluggishly about the riven hulk,
O'er which the day rose sunless as the night,
Or glared potentous on the sail-less bulk
With a red eye and fiery. Lo! I
Chafe Ocean, that he waken from his sulk
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Awhile, and blow a gale, though weariedly
And brief;—yet unto me the billows spring,
Wild playmates, and a low-breathed harmony
We utter round the hopeless bark, and sing
A doleful and predestinating dirge.
Then droops again old Ocean, murmuring,
Like to a dreaming giant, whom no scourge
May waken more, basking in watchet weeds
Under the calm blue heaven; while on the verge
Of that doomed ship gaunt Famine sits, and feeds
On flesh of men; with Thirst that drinks their blood;
And Pestilence, glad of their savage deeds,
That, shivering at the helmless stern, doth brood,
Couchant o'er carcases. And I am there!
—The Crater is my cradle. In still mood,
As in the womb the infant, in my lair
Of sulphur I repose, which bubbleth up
So gently, that the traveller well may dare
Descending to the brim of that hot cup;
As if, thus amiable, I might therein
Dissolve, like to a pearl, for lips to sup,
Ay, sweet as Cleopatra's. Now begin
The waters to ferment, and central fire
To howl, and with huge uproar and wild din,
Earth's matrix with prodigious throes heaves dire;
And there, in that capacious cavern, boil
The floods as in a cauldron, and perspire
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Through all her pores, making the sea recoil
From the bare shore affrightedly. Anon,
The rocky pillars of the human soil
Shake, and the myriad mountains shiver down,
Vast, subterrane, obscure, with hideous crash,
Hurled by the winds into the abyss unknown;
Then up the billows in fierce anger dash
From chaos, seething like a yeasty wine
Over its bursting vessel; as they clash,
Straight do th' imprisoned vapours fiercely pine
And rage for vent. Earth gapes convulsively,
And vomits the Volcano. It is mine!
—I make the solid ground like to the sea,
And undulate like ocean billowy;
And the columnar smoke,—it chariots me,—
That heaves aloft, a mass, into the sky,
A dun funereal shade, a broad black stain,
Like the pine's branches. In the flame am I
Wherein the mountain melts, and in the rain
Of ashes, and the lava flood. I burn
In the withering air, and on the molten plain.
Men perish as they flee. When I return
With the swoln Neptune—lo, a vacant coast,
Proud City late, but now an open Urn,
Sepulchring her white ashes, or her ghost.
—Strange pangs seize Earth. The sound of rushing wheels,
Whose axles burn with thunder, like a host!
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'Tis he of the earth-shaking mace: She reels
Inebriate with the terrour of his coming.
He heard the clang of my pale courser's heels,
And roused him at the summons of Death's dooming.
Ay, Demigods are ye? (Then what am I,
Haught Deicide?) Ye who, with wrath consuming
The World into a pyre, would deify
Yourselves, like Hercules, and climb in flame
Audacious to the stars, and shine on high,
So purified by fire. Vaunt ye? Ye came,
And saw, and conquered—what? Worms—ashes—dust.
I war with Heaven, and Him who rules the same,
The Anointed, the Omnipotent, the Just,
The Good, the Wise, the Holy, and the One!
His hand doth drop the golden chain, or must,
(The Father pierced in the begotten Son,)
By which the pendent and terrestrial Orb
Is ordered and sustained. The deed is done!
—Lo, hungry Chaos yawneth to resorb
Into his void immeasurable womb
The breathing Universe. Ready, my barb!
Perish, Man—Angel! To the monstrous tomb,
Being and Form, Intelligence and Power;
All things create to unsubstantial gloom!
—The engendered Hour—the inevitable Hour,
Born of th' unnumbered Age by thought untrod—
On the Creator his own heavens do lour.
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The Sun dies in his sphere, a kneaded clod,
The empyreal canopy doth bow,
Dissolved in darkness o'er the dying God!
—All Hell reverberates with the stricken blow;
Her caves cry to each other, peal for peal,
Yea, all her echoes are rejoicing now;
—(What boots it hence their mysteries to conceal?)—
And, like the voices of the waters, crowd
Together in their rivalry and zeal.
He from the Heaven of heavens of old forthrode,
In the paternal chariot did pursue,
And hurled Rebellion from that high abode—
I heard his last prayer, the last sigh he drew,
And I beheld him bow his holy head,
Whose locks were humid with ambrosial dew.
Chief Warrior, and chief Victor, bravely sped—
I conquer conquerors—all revenges wreak—
Thou, my last Foe, transfixed, suspended, dead!”
—Within that shadowy vault a short shrill shriek,
Like eastern gust in crannies of old tower,
There multiplies itself,...of what to speak?
—Writhed as a woman in her travail hour
Spectral, and yet in pain majestical,
How ghastly in her beauty's fatal dower,
The Phantasm of pale Earth! Amidst the Hall
She weeps,..anon, into a fading wreath,
Dissolved; like mountain-mist that borrows all
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Shapes vague and void, and melts upon the heath.
Cold lightning gleams, an ice-bolt rives;—they sweep
That region like a storm—And where is Death?
Even as the pageant of a haunted sleep
Of dreams whence the flesh quakes, that Centaur-Wraith,
With those huge Shapes, and that Sepulchral Deep,
Have vanished from the eye of Fancy and of Faith.
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