Finis

    It seemed that from the west
    The live red flame of sunset,
    Eating the dead blue sky
    And cold insensate peaks,
    Was loosened slowly, and fell.
    Above it, a few red stars
    Burned down like low candle-flames
    Into the gaunt black sockets
    Of the chill insensible mountains.
    But in the ascendant skies
    (Cloudless, like some vast corpse
    Unfeatured, cerementless)
    Succeeded nor star nor planet.
    It may have been that black,
    Pulseless, dead stars arose
    And crossed as of old the heavens.
    But came no living orb,
    Nor comet seeming the ghost,
    Homeless, of an outcast world,
    Seeking its former place
    That is no more nor shall be
    In all the Cosmos again.
    Null, blank, and meaningless
    As a burnt scroll that blackens
    With the passing of the fire,
    Lay the dead infinite sky.
    Lo! in the halls of Time,
    I thought, the torches are out -
    The revelry of the gods,
    Or lamentation of demons
    For which their flames were lit,
    Over and quiet at last
    With the closing peace of night,
    Whose dumb, dead, passionless skies
    Enfold the living world
    As the sea a sinking pebble.