Nero (Smith)

This Rome, that was the toil of many men, The consummation of laborious years— Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead And image of the wide desire of kings— Is made my darkling dream's effulgency, Fuel of vision, brief embodiment Of wandering will and wastage of the strong Fierce ecstasy of one tremendous hour, When ages piled on ages like a pyre Flamed to the years behind and years to be.

Yet any sunset were as much as this, Save for the music forced from tongueless things, The rape of Matter's huge, unchorded harp By the many-fingered fire—a music pierced With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry Its agony—and save that I believed The radiance redder for the blood of men. Destruction hastens and intensifies The process that is beauty, manifests Ranges of form unknown before, and gives Motion, and voice, and hue, where otherwise Bleak inexpressiveness had levelled all.

If one create, there is the lengthy toil; The labored years and days league toward an end Less than the measure of desire, mayhap, After the sure consuming of all strength And strain of faculties that otherwhere Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last Remains to one capacity nor power For pleasure in the thing that he hath made. But on destruction hangs but little use Of time or faculty, but all is turned To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure, Of sensuous rapture and observant joy; And from the intensities of death and ruin One draws a heightened and completer life, And both extends and vindicates himself.

I would I were a god, with all the scope Of attributes that are the essential core Of godhead, and its visibility. I am but emperor, and hold awhile The power to hasten death upon its way, And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life For others, but for mine own self may not Delay the one nor bid the other speed. There have been many kings, and they are dead, And have no power in death save what the wind Confers upon their blown and brainless dust To vex the eyeballs of posterity. But were I God, I would be overlord Of many kings, and were as breath to guide Their dust of destiny. And were I God, Exempt from this mortality which clogs Perception and clear exercise of will, What rapture it would be, if but to watch Destruction crouching at the back of Time, The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling suns; The vampire, Silence, at the breast of worlds, Fire without light that gnaws the base of things, And Lethe's mounting tide that rots the stone Of fundamental spheres. This were enough Till such time as the dazzled wings of will Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt For very suddenness. Then I would urge The strong contention and conflicting might Of Chaos and Creation—matching them, Those immemorial powers inimical, And all their stars and gulfs subservient, Dynasts of time, and anarchs of the dark— In closer war reverseless, and would set New discord at the universal core— A Samson-principle to bring it down In one magnificence of ruin. Yea, The monster, Chaos, were mine unleashed hound, And all my power Destruction's own right arm!

I would exult to mark the smouldering stars Renew beneath my breath their elder fire And feed upon themselves to nothingness. The might of suns—slow-paced with swinging weight Of myriad worlds—were made at my desire One orb of roaring and torrential light, Through which the voice of Life were audible, And singing of the immemorial dead, Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings With soaring wrack of systems ruinous. And were I weary of the glare of these, I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand Above a chaos of extinguished suns, That crowd and grind and shiver thunderously, Lending vast voice and motion but no ray To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs. Thus would I give my godhead space and speech For its assertion, and thus pleasure it, Hastening the feet of Time with cast of worlds Like careless pebbles, or, with shattered suns, Brightening the aspect of Eternity.