The Book of Ballads / Eleventh Edition, 1870

THE DEATH OF SPACE

[Why has Satan's own Laureate never given to the world his marvellous threnody on the "Death of Space"? Who knows where the bays might have fallen, had he forwarded that mystic manuscript to the Home Office? If un-wonted modesty withholds it from the public eye, the public will pardon the boldness that tears from blushing obscurity the following fragments of this unique poem.]

Eternity shall raise her funeral-pile
In the vast dungeon of the extinguished sky,
And, clothed in dim barbaric splendour, smile,
And murmur shouts of elegiac joy.

While those that dwell beyond the realms of space,
And those that people all that dreary void,
When old Time's endless heir hath run his race,
Shall live for aye, enjoying and enjoyed.

And 'mid the agony of unsullied bliss,
Her Demogorgon's doom shall Sin bewail,
The undying serpent at the spheres shall hiss,
And lash the empyrean with his tail.

And Hell, inflated with supernal wrath,
Shall open wide her thunder-bolted jaws,
And shout into the dull cold ear of Death,
That he must pay his debt to Nature's laws.

And when the King of Terrors breathes his last,
Infinity shall creep into her shell,
Cause and effect shall from their thrones be cast,
And end their strife with suicidal yell:

While from their ashes, burnt with pomp of kings,
'Mid incense floating to the evanished skies,
Nonentity, on circumambient wings,
An everlasting Phoenix shall arise.

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