Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODE OF CREATION, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ODE OF CREATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A dark and boundless deep
Last Line: Its former self or primal state at all.
Subject(s): Creation


A DARK and boundless deep,
And a blind height above,
Untrodden fields of sleep,
Wherein no force may move,
Where every sound is still,
Nor breathes a living breath; --
These are the heights, these are the depths, these are the voids of Death.

But slowly on the lifeless plain
There wakes a far-sent ray, a little star,
A tiny spark of Being from afar,
A throb of precious pain.
It is done, it has been, it has risen, the glimmer of Life,
The dark void withdrawing around,
It breaks with a whisper of sound,
Through the wastes of silence and sleep,
There is no more stillness nor Death,
The great Universe wakes with a deep-drawn singultient breath.
The great orbs cohere and spin on their measureless ways --
-- The great suns awaken and shine, ringed with girdles of fire every one --
All the worlds are on fire and ablaze --
The flaming globes circle and whirl each one round its sun
-- The hot seas seethe and bellow -- the fixed hills glow --
And the blast of Creation burns fierce while the centuries grow;
And Life and Time have begun!

Myriads on myriads of years!
Or was there indeed no time except in the Infinite Mind?
And was there indeed no ceasless circling of spheres?
Since no sentient eye might mark the peripheries wind,
And at length the great Life of the worlds grown concentrate would thrill
Through some lowly speck of matter, which, waxing apart,
Grew conscious by slow degrees, and blossomed in Will;
Weak centres of Force, which floated as motes in a beam,
Automatic, contracting, expanding, but consciousless yet.
Till a stronger force working within them would raise them once more,
Pushing with inchoate fin as if with an oar
Afloat on the slow warm stream;
And another Creation has come and a new-begun strife,
With this primal glimmer of life.

Myriads on myriads of years! if Time there were yet,
When no soul was by to remember or to forget;
The fin growing stronger, and changing to wing or to claw,
Struggle on struggle, sentience, consciousness, ravin, and pain,
Monstrous and mailed forms in the ooze, or hurtling thro' air,
Waging through aeons of time the ineffable struggles which gain
Order thro' waste and thro' wear.
Till the mastodon stalks forth in might with hoof and with jaw,
And the law of the Higher prevails, the Ultimate Law,
And the cooler earth teems with life, on land and in sea:
Life organic in beast, fish, or bird, in herb or in tree,
Life dominant, life exulting with quick-coming breath,
Life that fades down and sinks in the silence and slumber of Death.
But no soul to mark the struggle nor thought which might turn
To whence those weird fires burn.
Successions, progressions, a scheme of insensible life,
One Will alone directing the infinite strife,
One Force, one Eye, one Sole and Regarding Mind,
In a Universe deaf and blind!

And was it some Inner Law,
Some hidden potency of Force,
Or some creative breath Divine,
Which sped the creature on its upward course?
Until at last it woke and saw,
With visual forces fine,
The Godhead that was round it everywhere,
The spiritual essence fair,
Which doth innerve this outward show of things --
And filled the brute with high imaginings,
And winging it with new-found wings
Lifted its aspect to the infinite sky,
Where, in the Light of the Creative Eye
Its ancient slough away it cast,
And rose to Man at last!

How know we or can trace
The first beginnings of all Time,
Who know not yet indeed how this our race
Rises to heights sublime?
In darkness does our life begin,
Hidden and fenced within.
In darkness and obscurity
Dwell the blind germs which yet shall be.
In darkness the slow rolling months fulfil
The pre-ordained will.
And even in childhood's earliest days,
No memory-haunted ways
Take our first footsteps; but in deep
And unremembered tracts of sleep
The immature creature dwells, nor can recall
Its former self or primal state at all.





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