Bound to the earth in its headlong flight,
Whence and whither we do not know,
Cleaving the awful void of night
With frost above and fire below,
What is the goal toward which we fly?
What does it mean to live and die?

Under our feet a trembling shell,
Pierced by a hundred lurid rents!
Lower still a molten hell,
Seen through its lava-belching vents!
And men, within its blighting breath,
Are charred, like leaves, to a shrivelled death.

Thin is the rind on which we tread;
It shakes, and a thousand lives are lost;
The sea engulfs unnumbered dead;
Each second scores of souls are tossed
Into the stream that sweeps them on …
Whither? Who knows where they are gone?

Over the earth-crust millions crawl,
Fight for a little gold and grain,
Then in a few years leave it all,
Nevermore to be seen again!
When will the tragic tale be told?
And what of Man when the earth grows cold?

Poised on the planet's rim we stand,
Peering aghast into boundless space;
Infinite depths on every hand,
Never again in the self-same place;
Dragged by the sun itself away
On toward a point in the Milky Way.

Not without companions we;
Here and there gleam other fires,—
Burning ships on a shoreless sea;
Now and again a flame expires,
One last, quivering shaft of light,
Shot through a billion leagues of night.

There in its last volcanic throes
A dying world perhaps dissolves;
Further still, where the sun-mist glows,
A mighty, new-born sun evolves;
Ceaseless change in an endless sky!
What does it mean to live and die?