  HOW shall I know when the end of things is coming? The dark swifts flitting, the drone-bees humming; The fly on the window-pane bedazedly strumming; Ice on the waterbrooks their clear chimes dumbing— How shall I know that the end of things is coming? The stars in their stations will shine glamorous in the black; Emptiness, as ever, haunt the great Star Sack; And Venus, proud and beautiful, go down to meet the day, Pale in phosphorescence of the green sea spray— How shall I know that the end of things is coming? Head asleep on pillow; the peewits at their crying; A strange face in dreams to my rapt phantasma sighing; Silence beyond words of anguished passion; Or stammering an answer in the tongue's cold fashion— How shall I know that the end of things is coming? Or counting up a fortune to which Destiny hath bound me; Or—Vanity of Vanities—the honey of the Fair; Or a greybeard, lost to memory, on the cobbles in my chair— How shall I know that the end of things is coming? The drummers will be drumming; the fiddlers at their thrumming; Nuns at their beads; the mummers at their mumming; Heaven's solemn Seraph stoopt weary o'er his summing; The palsied fingers plucking, the way-worn feet numbing— And the end of things coming.
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