Whether the action begin with the impulse of Dissolution or with that of Creation does not in any way affect the essentials of the plan. The alternations of Life and Death, of Cosmic Night and Day, must inevitably follow and destroy each other, like the serpents in the ancient symbol. Yet I thought it desirable to end this work with the larger and salient note of hope and joy that rings out of the Birth that is Re-birth rather than with the Passing which is but a recurrent preparation for that Birth.

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER. London, 1911.

 

 

 

 

THE PASSING

The song of the Spirit of Chaos is heard on high above the aged Solar Universe.

The Sun hangs in the black wastes below. His dazzling beams are shorn away. He glows, but dimly, like an ember, with a red and smouldering heat.

In their concentric rounds lie poised the planets, like weary-winged cup-bearers, circling about their sleepless lord.

His fire, dull with death, wavers across their dim faces, even unto dusky Uranus and lowering Neptune in the cold, outermost rings.

In the dark, all-surrounding void new constellations gleam on the thrones of the heavens. The old are changed, deposed or dead.

Their figures, unfixed in the abyss, have been shifted like errant sands of Earth.

The spirit of Chaos, from her uncharted tracts, summons her ministrant powers of Death and Change. She beholds them blight the worlds. Her presence enfolds destroyers and destroyed as with a cloak.

The dusks and damps of dissolution spread out their lethal and invisible wings.

The voice of the Spirit, like spheral music, flows out of the darkness.

The orbs listen and are filled with a miraculous consciousness and the soft lassitude of Death.

 

 Prev. P 2/19 next