The Star-Treader and Other Poems

Now were the Titans gathered round their king,
In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge
Of drear extremities that clasp the world—
A land half-moulded by the hasty gods,
And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars,
Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone;
Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep
Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood,
Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak
Among the lesser hills that guard its base.
Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance
Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun
Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold,
Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight
Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments.
A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice
Of phantom hosts—hurried, importunate,
And intermittent with a tightening fear.
Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds,
Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces
In which to make the fetters of the world.
Seared by the lightning of the younger gods,
They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills,
Those levins thrust like spears into the heart
Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky
Like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched,
The night rose like a black, enormous mist
Around them, wherein naught was visible
Save the sharp levin leaping in the north;
And no sound came, except of seas remote,
That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge
Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts
Of Matter.
Till the moon, discovering
That harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone
Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld,
Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form,
They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs—
The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts,
And in the slow withdrawal of the tide
Safe for awhile. Small solace did they take
From that frore radiance glistering on the dull
Black desert gripped in iron silences,
Like a false triumph o'er contestless fates,
Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death.
Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice
Seeming the soul of that tremendous land
Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars.
"O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world,
Is this the end? Must Earth go down to Chaos,
Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed sway
Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth,
Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance,
To bind their will as reins upon the sun,
Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens?
Must we behold, with eyes of impotence
That universal wrack, even though it whelm
These our usurpers in impartial doom
Beneath the shards and fragments of the world?
Were it not preferable to return,
And meeting them in fight unswervable,
Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes,
One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos?
Why should we stay, and live the tragedy
Of power that survives its use?"
Now spake
Enceladus, when that the echoings
Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed
Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star;
"Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf,
Like to a stone a curious child might cast
To test the fall of some dark precipice?
Patience and caution should we take as mail,
Not rashness for a weapon—too keen sword
That cuts the strainèd knot of destiny,
Ne'er to be tied again. Were it not best
To watch the slow procedure of the days,
That we may grasp a time more opportune,
When desperation is not all our strength,
Nor the foe newly filled with victory?
Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm
For thee, not for the gods of nothingness."
He ceased, and after him no lesser god
Gave voice upon the shaken silences,
None venturing to risk comparison,
Inevitable then, of eloquence
With his; but silence like the ambiguousness
Of signal and of lesser stars o'ercast
And merged in one confusion by the moon,
Possessed that multitude, till Saturn rose.
Around his form the light intensified,
And strengthened with addition wild and strange,
Investing him as with a phantom robe,
And gathering like a crown about his brow.
His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust
He took, and dipping it within the moon,
Made clean its length of blade, and from it cast
Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice
Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes
Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound.