LESSON CLXXVIII.

DARKNESS.

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, 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 chilled into a selfish prayer for light.

And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons ; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face :
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.

A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded, and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash, and all was black.
The brows of men, by the despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clinched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again,
With curses, cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled.

The wild birds shrieked,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes
Came, tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless: they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left.

All earth was but one thought, and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh.
The meager by the meager were devoured;
Even dogs assailed their masters; all, save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress, he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage: they raked up,

And, shivering, scraped, with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame,

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects; saw, and shrieked, and died;
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow

Famine had written fiend.

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 stirred within their silent depths;

Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped,

They slept on the abyss without a surge.

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;

The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished. Darkness had no need
Of aid from them. She was the universe.

BYRON.

LESSON CLXXIX.

A WORLD WITHOUT WATER

I HAD a dream in the dead of night,
A dream of agony;

I thought the world stood in affright,
Beneath the hot and parching light
Of an unclouded sky;

I thought there had fallen no cooling rain
For months upon the feverish plain,

And that all the springs were dry.

And I was standing on a hill,
And looking all around;

I know not how it was, but still

Strength in my limbs was found,
As if with a spell of three-fold life,
My destinies were bound.

Beneath me was a far-spread heath,
Where once had risen a spring,
Looking as bright as a silver wreath
In its graceful wandering;

But now the sultry glance of the sun,
And the glare of the dark, blue sky,
Had checked its course, no more to run
In light waves wandering by.

And further on was a stately wood,
With its tall trees rising high;
But now like autumn wrecks they stood
Beneath a summer sky:

And every leaf, though dead, did keep
Its station in mockery;

For there was not one breath to sweep
The leaves from each perishing tree;
And there they hung, dead, motionless;
They hung there day by day,

As though death were too busy with other things
To sweep their corpses away.

Oh, terrible it was to think

Of human creatures then!

How they did seek in vain for drink
In every vale and glen;

And how the scorched foot did shrink
As it touched the slippery plain :

And some had gathered beneath the trees
In hope of finding shade;

But, alas! there was not a single breeze
Astir in any glade !

The cities were forsaken,

For their marble wells were spent ;

And the walls gave back the scorching glare Of that hot firmament:

But the corses of those who died were strewn In the street, as dead leaves lay,

And dry they withered, and withered alone;
They felt no foul decay.

Night came. The fiery sun sank down,
And the people's hope grew strong:

It was a night without a moon,
It was a night in the depth of June,

And there swept a wind along;

'Twas almost cool: and then they thought Some blessed dew it would have brought.

Vain was the hope! there was no cloud
In the clear, dark, blue Heaven;
But, bright and beautiful, the crowd

Of stars looked through the even.
And women sat them down to weep
Over their hopeless pain;

And men had visions dark and deep,
Clouding the dizzy brain;

And children sobbed themselves to sleep,

And never woke again.

The morning came; not as it comes

Softly 'mid rose and dew;

Not with those cool and fresh perfumes
That the weariest heart renew;

But the sun sprang up, as if eager to see
What next his power could do.

A mother held her child to her breast,
And kissed it tenderly,

And then she saw her infant smile:

What could that soft smile be?

A tear had sprung with a sudden start,
To her hot, feverish eye;

It had fallen upon that faint child's lip,
That was so parched and dry.

I looked upon the mighty sea;

O, what a sight it was!

All its waves were gone, save two or three,
That lay, like burning glass,

Within the caves of those deep rocks
Where no human foot could pass.

And in the very midst, a ship
Lay in the slime and sand;
With all its sailors perishing,
Even in sight of land;

Oh, water had been a welcome sight
To that pale, dying band!

Oh, what a sight was the bed of the sea!

The bed where he had slept,

Or tossed and tumbled restlessly,

And all his treasures kept

For ages; he was gone; and all

His rocky pillows shown,

With their clustering shells, and sea-weed pall, And the rich gems round them thrown.

And the monsters of the deep lay dead,
With many a human form,
That there had found a quiet bed,
Away from the raging storm;
And the fishes, sodden in the sun,

Were strewn by thousands round;
And a myriad things, long lost and won,
Were there, unsought for, found.

I turned away from earth and sea,
And looked on the burning sky,
But no drop fell, like an angel's tear,
The founts of heaven were dry:
The birds had perished every one;
Not a cloud was in the air;
And desolate seemed the very sun.
He looked so lonely there.