Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
 The bright sun was extinguish'd,
 And the stars did wander darkling
 In the eternal space,
 Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
 Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
 Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
 And men forgot their passions in the dread
 Of this their desolation;
 And all hearts were chill'd
 Into a selfish prayer for light:
 And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
 The palaces of crowned kings—
 The huts, the habitations of all things which dwell,
 Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
 And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
 To look once more into each other's face;
 Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
 Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
 A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
 Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
 They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
 Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
 All earth was but one thought—and that was death
 Immediate and inglorious;
 And the pang of famine fed upon all entrails—
 Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
 The world was void,
 The populous and the powerful was a lump,
 Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
 A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
 The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
 And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
 Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
 And their masts fell down piecemeal:
 As they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge—
 The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
 The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
 The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
 And the clouds perish'd;
 Darkness had no need of aid from them—
 She was the Universe.