Poems of Cheer/Into Space

If the sad old world should jump a cog
 * Sometime, in its dizzy spinning,

And go off the track with a sudden jog,
 * What an end would come to the sinning,

What a rest from strife and the burdens of life
 * For the millions of people in it,

What a way out of care, and worry and wear,
 * All in a beautiful minute.

As 'round the sun with a curving sweep
 * It hurries and runs and races,

Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap
 * Into the vast sea-spaces,

What a blest relief it would bring to the grief,
 * And the trouble and toil about us,

To be suddenly hurled from the solar world
 * And let it go on without us.

With not a sigh or a sad good-bye
 * For loved ones left behind us,

We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge
 * Where never a grave should find us.

What a wild mad thrill our veins would fill
 * As the great earth, like a feather,

Should float through the air to God knows where,
 * And carry us all together.

No dark, damp tomb and no mourner's gloom,
 * No tolling bell in the steeple,

But in one swift breath a painless death
 * For a million billion people.

What greater bliss could we ask than this,
 * To sweep with a bird's free motion

Through leagues of space to a resting place,
 * In a vast and vapoury ocean -

To pass away from this life for aye
 * With never a dear tie sundered,

And a world on fire for a funeral pyre,
 * While the stars looked on and wondered?