The Masque of the Elements
me, no more my rays Urge on her frozen roots to coloured bloom, No clouds enrobe her nakedness--her days, Once golden in the dance, are bent on doom. A loathing throngs the vision, and the face Of Man is stone and ashen, fallen supine. How long with Light and Love I warmed his race! Now iron crowns of Ruin and Death be mine.

The Earth-orb and her four elements are locked in the arms of decay.

She, like a stricken mother, bereaved of all beloved things, calls on the Sun, her primal fount of Life.

The saddest of all her twilights has fallen and is moving on to night.

Life, be it of man, or beast, or flower, is slowly quenched, as a torch is quenched in a midnight lake.

The haunts and habitations of men have vanished; they are not any more. Yet their ruins are heaped with snow that shall know no thawing.

Every hour of Earth is an eon and her day has yet many hours.

Her elements sing each their song. The parent Earth sends forth her cry into the void.

 

 

 

 

SONG OF THE PLANET EARTH

NOT now thy beams arouse me morn by morn, O Sun! as when my flesh was warm and young. Out of our love what children fair were born To rapture! ere thy last wild song was sung. I deem thy day is Night and thou the Moon--  So feeble is thy kiss, so cold thy light,-- Lamp of my life, alas!--how soon, how soon--  O speak! comes thy last greeting and good-night? My breasts are sere as sand, no flowers bloom, No grass, no forests hide my misery bare; The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume Those gardens of delight we made so fair, And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race, Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane, Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face, Nor tomb them in my hollow 
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