THE
BURDEN OF TIME.
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BEFORE
the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe
in space,
I capped earth’s poles with ice to South and
North,
And set the moving tides their
bounds and place.
I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
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My
fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and
the storm.
I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the
ice-clad zones;
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I
gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes
His mountain thrones.
I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of
outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the
light
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I planted life to root and grow
apace. [Page 17]
Then through a stillness deeper than the grave’s,
The coral spires rose slowly one
by one,
Until the white shafts pierced the upper waves
And shone like silver in the tropic
sun.
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I ploughed with glaciers down the mountain glen,
And graved the iron shore with
stream and tide;
I gave the bird her nest, the lion his den,
The snake long jungle-grass wherein
to hide.
In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
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I sowed the giant forests of the
world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors
I have hurled.
I plunged whole continents beneath the deep,
And left them sepulchred a million
years;
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I
called, and lo, the drowned lands rose from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.
I am the lord and arbiter of man—
I hold and crush between my
finger-tips
Wild hordes that drive the desert caravan,
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Great nations that go down to
sea in ships. [Page 18]
In sovereign scorn I tread the races down,
As each its puny destiny fulfils,
On plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown,
Wrapt in the deep thought of
the ancient hills.
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The wild sea searches vainly round the land
For those proud fleets my arm
has swept away;
Vainly the wind along the desert sand
Calls the great names of kings
who once held sway.
Yea, Nineveh and Babylon the great
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Are
fallen—like ripe ears at harvest-tide;
I set my heel upon their pomp and state,
The people’s serfdom and
the monarch’s pride.
One doom waits all—art, speech, law, gods,
and men,
Forests and mountains, stars
and shining sun,—
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The
hand that made them shall unmake again,
I curse them and they wither one
by one.
Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
Shall roll through space upon
the darkened globe,
Till I myself be overthrown, and God
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| Cast
off creation like an outworn robe. [Page
19] |
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