Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/24

 As once Protesiläus who reviewed

The human scene in more than human mood

And breathless in our upper kingdom sickened

And the old pilgrimage of death renewed.

Or as if hell-escaping dæmons thickened

In countless legions

Like locusts darkening these devoted regions,

Leaving their desert haunts untenanted,

Hungry for habitation, to possess

With madness an uncounted populace

And hurl them down, and tear, and leave them dead.

As though whole peoples erred and wandered unaware

Past the frontiers of Providence,

Beyond the vital air

To alien elements

To suffocate beyond God's atmosphere of care;

Hordes that in far migrations overpassed

The universe's habitable zone

Or some entire population gassed

By man-devisèd poisons yet unknown,

Or foul contagion sown,

Or liquid fires from the hostile heavens cast.

Corruption taints the world, plunged in the noisome night

Of some ill-starred eclipse,

The sun-devouring dragon casts his shade,

The isles take fright,

The peoples are dismayed,

A jaundiced blight

Has fallen on the luxuriant globe.

The moth of death is in the many-stranded robe

That mortals weave against the Apocalypse,

Its travailed woof that time transmutes

To stuff of gold

Crumbles to mould.

18