THE FIRE OF LIFE
“Clearest evidence shows how our Earth was once a fluid haze of light, and how for countless æons afterwards her globe was instinct with fiery heat.”
Richard Proctor.
On the brooding breast of the empty Dark, ere ever the world was made,
When the Gods were asleep in a realm of rest, half-buried ’twixt Light and Shade;
A Spirit arose on the vasty air.—a glorious Spirit of fire,—
A wingèd Marvel, whose eyes were bright with the flame of a new desire;
Crown’d with a thousand stars he stood in a halo of burning beams,
And lifting his passionate voice he roused the Gods from their idle dreams.
Up they started, those massive Shapes, and with swift creative hands,
They parted the darkness, let loose the light, and fashioned the seas and lands;
Great forests sprang from the teeming soil, with grasses and glory-flowers,
And minutes were made of jewel-points that glittered into Hours;
Out whirled the planets like silver ships in the sapphire depths of Heaven
And the Sun and Moon were born like babes from the marriage of Morn and Even.
Down through the skies fled the Spirit of Flame, and piercing the new earth-clods,
Drew vapours thence which slowly up-grew into forms that were like the Gods;
Vacant and empty of soul and sense, impotent creatures were they,
Till thrilled by the burning touch of Love,
they lived in the light of Day—
Lived, each one, for the breathing space of threescore years and ten,
And swore they were more than the Gods themselves,—these Shadows called women and men!
Then weary grew the Spirit of Fire, and rising on radiant wings,
He fled away from the whirling dance of his brief created things—
Earth’s black and sterile globe swung round on an edge of circling cold,
And the Sun was drowned in a spherical sea of moveless frozen gold—
The Gods departed and drowsed again by Life’s full-flowing river,
But the world they had made with a Breath of Flame had passed from their thoughts for ever!