THE saffron-colored stars of Hell Diminished one by one; Their lustres into grayness fell— The New Age had begun; And Satan's yellow gonfalons Like baleful meteors broke (Above his seething myrmidons) Thro' heaving bulks of smoke, As at the Gates of Bliss they clung In this last hopeless war, Ere Hell sloped down the void, far-flung, Like some dismembered star; At that same moment every rose Forsook its spikèd thorn; The North put warmth into its snows, Nor pushed with boreal horn; The spider laddered patterns wove Across the cannon's mouth, And frankincense and myrrh and clove Breathed each wind full of South; The serpent-sinuous wiles of Sin Assailed the sense no more, And wine, with bubbling demons in, To snare the soul forbore. Mankind was first to cry complaint: Art lost all hues but white; Song found no subject but the saint And dropped its wings ere flight. There grew no need for Book and Bell, And churches tumbled in; From her high honor Virtue fell, For GOD had vanquished Sin. A sadness touched e'en Heaven, then, And shadows of despair; @3No worship mounted up from men,— And angels live on prayer@1— "Ah, bring back Sin!" The Seraphim In mystic cadence cried. "Ah, once more make our sunshine dim With Death!" Creation sighed. So Death and Sin took up their way Among mankind once more, And Hell burst into dreadful day As it had flamed of yore! |