Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/84

56 That shiver with the breathings of the dawn,—

Creation, boundless, bodiless, unformed,

And white with trembling fire and light intense,

And outward pulsings like the boreal flame.

One mighty cloud it seemed, nor star, nor earth,

Or like a nameless growth of the under-seas;

Creation dumb, unconscious, yet alive

With some deep, inward passion unexprest,

And swift, concentric, never-ceasing urge—

Resolving gradual to one disk of fire.

And as I looked, behold! the flying rim

Grew separate from the center; this again

Divided, and the whole still swift revolved,

Ring within ring, and fiery wheel in wheel;

Till, sudden or slow as chanced, the outmost edge

Whirled into fragments, each a separate sun,

With lesser globes attendant on its flight.

These while I gazed turned dark with smoldering fire

And, slow contracting, grew to solid orbs.

Then knew I that this planetary world,

Cradled in light, and curtained with the dawn

And starry eve, was born; tho' in itself

Complete and perfect all, yet but a part

And atom of the living universe.

II

Unconscious still the child of the conscious God—

Creation, born of Beauty and of Love,

Beauty the womb and mother of all worlds.

But soon with breathless speed the new-made earth

Swept near me where I watched the birth of things,

Its greatening bulk eclipsing, star by star,

Half the bright heavens. Then I beheld crawl forth

Upon the earth's cool crust most wondrous forms