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? Haply on strange roads I shall be, the moorland's peace around me; 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ACCOMPLISHED FACTS by CARL SANDBURG TO THE SHADE OF PO CHU-I by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS A LITTLE WHILE by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI THE CORAL INSECT by LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY THE GRASS STEALERS by J. MURRAY ALLISON DESCRIBES THE PLACE WHERE CYNTHIA IS SPORTING HERSELF by PHILIP AYRES |