BY THE EARTH'S CORPSE

“O Lord, why grievest Thou? -

Since Life has ceased to be

Upon this globe, now cold

As lunar land and sea,

And humankind, and fowl, and fur

Are gone eternally,

All is the same to Thee as ere

They knew mortality.”

“O Time,” replied the Lord,

“Thou read'st me ill, I ween;

Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve

At that late earthly scene,

Now blestly past — though planned by me

With interest close and keen! -

Nay, nay: things now are NOT the same

As they have earlier been.

“Written indelibly

On my eternal mind

Are all the wrongs endured

By Earth's poor patient kind,

Which my too oft unconscious hand

Let enter undesigned.

No god can cancel deeds foredone,

Or thy old coils unwind!

“As when, in Noe's days,

I whelmed the plains with sea,

So at this last, when flesh

And herb but fossils be,

And, all extinct, their piteous dust

Revolves obliviously,

That I made Earth, and life, and man,

It still repenteth me!”