By the Earth’s Corpse
“O Lord, why grievest Thou?—Since Life has ceased to beUpon this globe, now coldAs lunar land and sea,And humankind, and fowl, and furAre gone eternally,All is the same to Thee as ereThey knew mortality.”
“O Time,” replied the Lord,“Thou read’st me ill, I ween;Were all the same, I should not grieveAt that late earthly scene,Now blestly past—though planned by meWith interest close and keen!—Nay, nay: things now are not the sameAs they have earlier been.
“Written indeliblyOn my eternal mindAre all the wrongs enduredBy Earth’s poor patient kind,Which my too oft unconscious handLet enter undesigned.No god can cancel deeds foredone,Or thy old coils unwind!
“As when, in Noë’s days,I whelmed the plains with sea,So at this last, when fleshAnd herb but fossils be,And, all extinct, their piteous dustRevolves obliviously,That I made Earth, and life, and man,It still repenteth me!”
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