Herman George Scheffauer

“ Rejoice, O orb vestured in beauty! Put forth thy wings, thy coronals of Love, wrap thee with fluctuant Winds and exulting Seas!
Shall thy offspring feel dismay, knowing what light shall burst from dark, what life leap from Death, what flowers blow from dust?
So the anointed and belted spheres, re-risen from their bath of silence and their sleep of time, move on companioned with eternal hope.
The fingers of the Sun stroke forth a glorious strain; the worlds are shawns and cymbals for his minstrelsy. The Spirit of Creation pours forth her victorious baptismal harmonies. ”

“ Life, be it of man, or beast, or flower, is slowly quenched, as a torch is quenched in a midnight lake.
The haunts and habitations of men have vanished; they are not any more. Yet their ruins are heaped with snow that shall know no thawing.
Every hour of Earth is an eon and her day has yet many hours.
Her elements sing each their song. The parent Earth sends forth her cry into the void. ”

“ A prone and expiring giant lifts up his bulk once more and would not die.
It is Ocean, usurper of Earth's deepest vales, besieger of islands, batterer of continents.
His great green front and land-fettered limbs glimmer up to his mistress Moon. His breast heaves unto her as of old with an awful and passionate longing.
But a film has veiled his eyes, and now stagnation builds up her muddy pillars in his heart. There Death reigns amidst havoc.
His leviathans and huge worms and wrecks of ships rot on every shore and in his dunnest deeps amidst pearls and sea-born blooms. ”

“ She lies as a garment upon the Mother-sphere; her feet trespass on Ocean.
Her heart is fretted with Fire, her flanks by the Seas, her brows by Sun and Wind.
In patience and sweet sufferance she lies, substance, nurse and genetrix of Life.
Her Song is heard, a mutter of music, low yet coalescent in slow estrangement from her lips.
I WAKE again!--O dauntless peaks that stand,
Watch-towers to all the Heavens--O vales that lie,--
See where I rise or stretch, the lusty land
Checks Seas and winnows Winds and frets the sky. ”

“ Now it is the Song of the Spirit of Creation that is heard on high above the perished Solar Universe.
The dead worlds are hidden in the lap of Night, sightless, forlorn wanderers. They move in darkness, unseeing and unseen, though smitten by the rays of living stars.
Upon their cold breasts of stone the dust of ruined worlds lies as a garment. Windless it lies as it falls or rises out of Chaos that encompasses all.
The Spirit of Creation moves grandly through the deeps. ”

“ In the dark, all-surrounding void new constellations gleam on the thrones of the heavens. The old are changed, deposed or dead.
Their figures, unfixed in the abyss, have been shifted like errant sands of Earth. ”

“ The Element of Earth, waste and inert, hears at last the cry of the Mother-globe.
Her crests and peaks, her vales and plains, lie white and whelmed with snow.
The mountain ranges draw their icy shrouds over the faces of dead continents. ”

“ In her hands she bears Fire and Light, on her lips her all-conquering command. She flings dead worlds among the dead, as a sower his seed or a slinger his stones.
A spark is lit in the vast obscure. A glory, a rose of fire, blooms in the pit of darkness. ”

“ With pearls of white enchantment I bestrew
The happy realms where lovers hunt their bliss;
My ray is pale as frost and soft as dew;
My path is woven in snow through the abyss.
The ambient fluid of the Winds is born, Air is born, invisible Element, felt yet unfeeling. ”

“ Repossessed of their ancient heritage, the four conqueror Elements sit on their dowered spheres.
Wind, Ember, Current, conscious Earth, the eternal weavers and toilers, labour in felicity.
Chaos and Night and Death are disenthroned. The system burns along its orbits through the dark. The benisons of the stars and suns are cast upon these youngest worlds. ”

“ He shakes his threshing, intolerable mane of flames, his face bans darkness and makes a burning void in his domains. He pours his lustihood and power upon the joyous spheres. His rays transmute all things. ”

“ Upward and onward he aspires. His crimson vans are spread against the heavens, his torches flutter, making glorious the funerals of the day. His feet are a scourge across the soil; his arms are lifted to the stars. ”

“ The action takes its course with a certain regard for the laws and revelations of Science, but this compliance is only such as poetry need observe. Despite the inherent and mystic majesty of Matter,--too commonly reviled!--fantasy must have leave, in such a work, to force its way past the barrier of facts or to reshape them to its needs. ”