Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light…

The world was void,

The populous and the powerful — was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless —

A lump of death — a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths…