[Note:  This text contains many words with archaic spelling, which I have not modernized. Also, while the first word of each poem is usually capitalized, not all of them are, and I have left the uncapitalized words as is.]

 

THE MASQUE OF THE ELEMENTS

BY HERMAN SCHEFFAUER

LONDON: J. M. Dent & Sons, Limited Bedford Street, Strand 1912 New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

All rights reserved

TO MY DEAR FRIEND ALBERT M. BENDER

CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

ARGUMENT

In this Threnody and Birth-song of the Elements, written in California some five years ago, I have striven to capture and present some of the chief-factors and phases of the eternal drama of Life and Death in the Universe. These powers, elements and agents I have endowed with human attributes and human emotions as though it were Man himself who uttered himself through them.

The actors in this cosmic masque or pageant of the planets are the Sun, the Moon and the Earth with her four Elements; for stage there is the limitless background of Time and Space, and the audience may be conceived as being represented by Immanent Nature. Creation and Dissolution are her ministers, twin forces of that divine everlasting Energy which brings to pass the cycles of the Eternal Recurrence.

The action takes its course with a certain regard for the laws and revelations of Science, but this compliance is only such as poetry need observe. Despite the inherent and mystic majesty of Matter,--too commonly reviled!--fantasy must have leave, in such a work, to force its way past the barrier of facts or to reshape them to its needs.

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