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The Spike or Victoria University College Review June 1925

God to the World at the End of Time

page 9

God to the World at the End of Time

Thou dost no good to shrink,
Earth, at the ultimate brink
Of space and being and wisdom and the years:
This is the end of all—
Gather to thee thy pall,
Nor even think unprofitable tears.

The aeons totter—thou
Fellow with aeons now,
Thou hast existed, Earth, and hast thine end:
The stars go out around—
Blackness without a sound
Blots Being: so doth ancient death impend.

Yet, ere I see thee go,
Think, as thou diest so,
Of what thy life hath been these million days
Since first a flame of fire
Shaped to my desire
I cast thee in the wild aetheric maze.

Thou hast been sad, O Earth—
Time wept to see thy birth,
Time that had seen, and even then was old:
Sad all the merriment
Within thy border pent—
Now sad, like Time, thy spirit groweth cold.

Brooding I watch and see
Thy spirit struggling free—
From age to age hast sought transcendence thou:
Thee and thy Dante's soul,
Thee Shakespeare, seeing whole
Thy life, I too have seen, remember now.

Shaken with battle—dark
Passionate self-made mark
For all thy wanton raging hast thou been—
Self-tortured, self-betrayed,
Thyself thy saviour made,
Thine is remorse, sorrow that cutteth keen.

For all thy sorrows take
This, ere the heart doth break,
For crown, that thou hast wonderfully striven.
Earth, O be comforted!
On border of the dead
Receive the doom that dying Time hath given.

The systems fade; at last,
Go, Earth, thy time is past;
With thy companions sink nor rise again.
In ruin I alone,
God, lonely, seek my throne—
Companionless and timeless I remain.

—J.C.B.