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Poems

By William Bell Scott. Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. Illustrated by Seventeen Etchings by the Author and L. Alma Tadema

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84

XI
THE UNIVERSE VOID.

Revolving worlds, revolving systems, yea,
Revolving firmaments, nor there we end:
Systems of firmaments revolving, send
Our thought across the Infinite astray,
Gasping and lost and terrified, the day
Of life, the goodly interests of home,
Shrivelled to nothing; that unbounded dome
Pealing still on, in blind fatality.
No rest is there for our soul's wingèd feet,
She must return for shelter to her ark—
The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete,
And let her bring this truth back from the dark:
Life is self-centred, man is nature's god;
Space, time, are but the walls of his abode.