Leaving it with a crown of many hues?

No more to be the beacon of the world,
For angels to alight on, as the spot

Nearest the stars? And can those words " no more"

Be meant for thee, for all things, save for us,
And the predestined creeping things reserved
By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May

He preserve them, and I not have the power
To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from
A doom which even some serpent, with his mate,
Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolong'd,
To hiss and sting through some emerging world,
Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze
Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this until
The salt morass subside into a sphere
Beneath the sun, and be the monument,
The sole and undistinguish'd sepulchre,
Of yet quick myriads of all life? How much
Breath will be still'd at once! All beauteous world!
So young, so mark'd out for destruction, I
With a cleft heart look on thee day by day,

And night by night, thy numbered days and nights.
I cannot save thee, cannot save even her
Whose love had made me love thee more; but as
A portion of thy dust, I cannot think

Upon thy coming doom without a feeling

Such as-Oh God! and canst thou

[He pauses

A rushing sound from the cavern is heard and shouts of laughter -afterwards a Spirit passes.

Japh.

Of the Most High, what art thou?

Spirit. (laughs.)

In the name

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ha! Ha!

Japh. By all that earth holds holiest, speak!
Spirit. (laughs.)

Japh. By the approaching deluge! by the earth
Which will be strangled by the ocean! by

The deep which will lay open all her fountains!
The heaven which will convert her clouds to seas,
And the Omnipotent who makes and crushes!
Thou unknown, terrible, and indistinct,
Yet awful Thing of Shadows, speak to me!
Why dost thou laugh that horrid laugh?
Spirit.

Why weep'st thou?

Japh. For earth and all her children.

[Spirit vanishes.

Japh. How the fiend mocks the tortures of a world,

The coming desolation of an orb,

On which the sun shall rise and warm no life!
How the earth sleeps! and all that in it is
Sleep too upon the very eve of death!

Why should they wake to meet it? What is here,
Which look like death in life, and speak like things
Born ere this dying world? They come like clouds!
[Various Spirits pass from the cavern.
Rejoice!

Spirit.

The abhorred race

Which could not keep in Eden their high place,

But listen'd to the voice

Of knowledge without power,

Are nigh the hour

Of death!

Not slow, not single, not by sword nor sorrow,

[tion,

Nor years, nor heart-break, nor time's sapping mo

Shall they drop off. Behold their last to-morrow!

Earth shall be ocean!

And no breath,

Save of the winds, be on the unbounded wave!

Angels shall tire their wings, but find no spot:

Not even a rock from out the liquid grave

Shall lift its point to save,

Or show the place where strong Despair hath died,
After long looking o'er the ocean wide

For the expected ebb which cometh not:
All shall be void,
Destroyed!

Another element shall be the lord

Of life, and the abhorr'd

Children of dust be quench'd; and of each hue
Of earth nought left but the unbroken blue;
And of the variegated mountain

Shall nought remain

Unchanged, or of the level plain;

Cedar and pine shall lift their tops in vain:
All merged within the universal fountain,
Man, earth, and fire, shall die,

And sea and sky

Look vast and lifeless in the eternal eye.
Upon the foam

Who shall erect a home?

Japhet. (coming forward.) My sire!

Earth's seed shall not expire;

Only the evil shall be put away

From day.

Avaunt! ye exulting demons of the waste! Who howl your hideous joy

When God destroys whom you dare not destroy; Hence! haste!

Back to your inner caves!

Until the waves

Shall search you in your secret place,

And drive your sullen race

Forth, to be roll'd upon the tossing winds

In restless wretchedness along all space!
Son of the saved!

Spirit.

When thou and thine have braved

The wide and warring element;

When the great barrier of the deep is rent, Shall thou and thine be good or happy?—No! Thy new world and new race shall be of wo— Less goodly in their aspect, in their years Less than the glorious giants, who

Yet walk the world in pride,

The Sons of Heaven by many a mortal bride.
Thine shall be nothing of the past, save tears.
And art thou not ashamed

Thus to survive,

And eat, and drink, and wive? <

With a base heart so far subdued and tamed,
As even to hear this wide destruction named,
Without such grief and courage, as should rather
Bid thee await the world-dissolving wave,

Than seek a shelter with thy favour'd father,
And build thy city o'er the drown'd Earth's grave'
Who would outlive their kind,

Except the base and blind?

Mine
Hateth thine

As of a different order in the sphere,

But not our own.

There is not one who hath not left a throne

Vacant in heaven to dwell in darkness here,
Rather than see his mates endure alone.
Go, wretch! and give

A life like thine to other wretches-live!
And when the annihilating waters roar
Above what they have done,,

Envy the Giant Patriarchs then no more,
And scorn thy sire as the surviving one!
Thyself for being his son!

Chorus of Spirits issuing from the cavern.

Rejoice!

No more the human voice

Shall vex our joys in middle air
With prayer;

No more

Shall they adore;

And we, who ne'er for ages have adored
The prayer-exacting Lord,

To whom the omission of a sacrifice

Is vice;

We, we shall view the deep's salt sources pour'd Until one element shall do the work

Of all in chaos; until they,

The creatures proud of their poor clay, Shall perish, and their bleached bones shall lurk In caves, in dens, in clefts of mountains, where The Deep shall follow to their latest lair;

Where even the brutes, in their despair, Shall cease to prey on man and on each other, And the striped tiger shall lie down to die Beside the lamb, as though he were his brother; Till all things shall be as they were, Silent and uncreated, save the sky:

While a brief truce

Is made with Death, who shall forbear
The little remnant of the past creation,
To generate new nations for his use:
This remnant, floating o'er the undulation
Of the subsiding deluge, from its slime,