PORTENTS

Above the world a glare

Of sunset — guns and spears;

An army, no one hears,

Of mist and air:

Long lines of bronze and gold,

Huge helmets, each a cloud;

And then a fortress old

There in the night that phantoms seem to crowd.

A face of flame; a hand

Of crimson alchemy

Is waved: and, solemnly,

At its command,

Opens a fiery well,

A burning hole,

From which a stream of hell,

A river of blood, in frenzy, seems to roll.

And there, upon a throne,

Like some vast precipice,

Above that River of Dis,

Behold a King! alone!

Around whom shapes of blood

Take form: each one the peer

Of those, who, in the wood

Of Dante's Hell froze up the heart with fear.

Then shapes, that breast to breast

Gallop to face a foe:

And through the crimson glow

Th’ imperial crest

Of him whose banner flies

Above a world that burns,

A raven in the skies,

And as it flies into a Death's-Head turns.

The wild trees writhe and twist

Their gaunt limbs, wrung with fear:

And now into my ear

A word seems hissed;

A message, filled with dread,

A dark, foreboding word,—

“Behold! we are the dead,

Who here on Earth lived only by the sword!”