 | A Lost Epic and Other Poems |  |
God shut him in.
If some great angel came
By night or day, in wind or cloud or flame;
Or God Himself leaned out of heaven to close
The refuge of the Ark—no mortal knows.
God shut him in. The Lord God sealed his door.
By night or day, in wind or cloud or flame;
Or God Himself leaned out of heaven to close
The refuge of the Ark—no mortal knows.
Whom God shuts in is safe for evermore.
For yet seven days did God the Lord restrain
The vengeance of the deep and of the rain.
There was a noise of viols in the earth,
Eating and drinking, pomp and bridal mirth,
And violence, and cries of captives sold,
And worshippings of stone and wood and gold.
Through all the golden cities, the unholy;
Through regions of broad rivers winding slowly;
To savage mountain-gorge and far-off strand
Strange rumours spread, how forth of every land,
From under every star and cloud, there came
Innumerable creatures—wild and tame,
Known and unnamable; hordes, flocks, flights, swarms;
An endless pageant of bewildering forms
And wondrous colours; monstrous and minute;
Grotesque, ferocious, lovely; beast and brute,
Bird, reptile, insect, mollusc; life in fur
And life in feather, leather, horny bur,
And shell, and hair, and scales.
Through regions of broad rivers winding slowly;
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Strange rumours spread, how forth of every land,
From under every star and cloud, there came
Innumerable creatures—wild and tame,
Known and unnamable; hordes, flocks, flights, swarms;
An endless pageant of bewildering forms
And wondrous colours; monstrous and minute;
Grotesque, ferocious, lovely; beast and brute,
Bird, reptile, insect, mollusc; life in fur
And life in feather, leather, horny bur,
And shell, and hair, and scales.
For many days
Their myriad-marching clouded distant ways
With dust, and filled the land with hoarse wild sound.
Men marvelled; but of all not one was found
To read the portent or to heed the sign.
Their myriad-marching clouded distant ways
With dust, and filled the land with hoarse wild sound.
Men marvelled; but of all not one was found
To read the portent or to heed the sign.
| A Lost Epic and Other Poems | |