Götterdämmerung

“ Yet she says she will come again and after the sun has travelled through the world in search of the beloved, when he is in the threshold of death, and is going to end his solitary life, she appears again in the Gloaming, the same as the Dawn, at the end of the dreary day when the sun seemed to die away in the far west, the heavens opened and the glorious image of the Dawn rose again, her beauty deepened by a gloaming darkness. ”

“ And silent footsteps of the gladsome dawn.
The morning breaks by sages long foretold;
Truth comes to set upon the world her throne.
Men lift their foreheads to the rising sun,
And lo the reign of Reason is begun.
Fantastic phantasms fly before the light—
Pale, gibbering ghosts and ghouls and goblin fears:
Man who hath walked in sleep—what thousands years?
Groping among the shadows of the night,
Moon-struck and in a weird somnambulism,
Mumbling some cunning cant or catechism,
Thrilled by the electric magic of the skies—
Sun-touched by Truth—awakes and rubs his eyes. ”

“ When Death no longer makes the grave his home;
When waking spirits leave their earthly rest
To mix for ever with the damn'd or blest;
When years, in drowsy thousands counted by,
Are hung on minutes with their destiny:
When Time in terror drops his draining glass,
And all things mortal, like to shadows, pass,
As 'neath approaching tempests sinks the sun—
When Time shall leave Eternity begun.
Life swoon'd in terror at that hour's dread birth ”

“ They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, under the shadow of an awful darkness, a darkness which knows no morning, no stars, no moon; a darkness palpable and visible, lighted only by electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars of thunder as we, in this day of harmonious nature, can form no conception of. It is, indeed, "chaos and ancient night." All the forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling against each other, and multiplied a thousand-fold in power; the winds are cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling. ”

“ How long I lay on that stone of sacrifice I cannot tell, but throughout the whole of the total eclipse, when everything was as dark as the blackest night and nature was hushed into absolute silence, I was fully awake to the possibilities of rescue or death. At length the umbra began to pass slowly across the moon, and a dim, greyish light faintly played on the grim outlines of the temple. ”

“ Such are the phenomena presented in the atmosphere by this most mysterious power. Dreadful in the lightning’s leap, strange and uncanny in the aureole’s glow, wildly and weirdly beautiful in the flickering flash and flow of the Northern Light, we have seen that, though it has played an important part in the history of the world because of its appeal to man’s superstition, it is notwithstanding the occasional bolt of death, to be considered, while one of the most powerful and universal, one of the least to be feared of all the forces of nature ”

“ Alas, Albert had its day of fate and of complete sacrifice ere the war should end—when all should go, yea, Virgin and all, and only Golgotha remain, Golgotha and the Roman soldiers who smote the Master with their spears as He hung from the Cross.
Twilight settles down upon the dead, the twilight of time and misery. The dreadful reality of destruction becomes more intense and real. After all, sunlight and the noonday do not always show us truth. They are in themselves so full of life and happiness that they divert attention from ruins and death unto themselves. ”

“ And again the flash to come, and mayhap a score times after; and there to come down out of the height a peculiar crackling sound, that did be less than the thunder of this age, yet more loud than any other sound that you ever to hear. And lo! I knew that the Humans did begin to fight for me, that I bring Mine Own safe unto Home.
And behold! it did be as that all the wakefulness of the Land that had been, did be but as sleep, beside the wakefulness that now to come; for surely the Night now to seem to rock with the roarings of the Monsters, and with the be-stirring of Great Forces. ”

“ Thunder, lightning, eclipses, comets, drought, floods, storms—anything strange or terrible, the cause of which was not understood, was ascribed to the wrath of some divinity; and men hastened to propitiate, as best they might, the divinities who were supposed to be scourging or threatening them. These deputy-gods were supposed to occupy the space between the earth and moon, and, being almost numberless and invisible, their worshippers held them in the same dread as if they possessed the attribute of omniscience. ”

“ Darkness came over me through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. I was taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a wandering bird fit for a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had not rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and destruction, and there was none to deliver me. ”

“ Only in the red man’s tales do we find the idea of the Christian world, of one Great Spirit who rules all nature. In the Persian mythology, lightning and gloom represent the contest between the forces of Ahriman, prince of evil, and Ormuzd, the great creator and preserver of good. And among the old Etruscans, from whom the Romans borrowed many rites and ceremonies, the lightning was one of the chief objects in their system of augury and divination. A favorable flash of lightning outweighed all portents of ill. The thunder was the voice of the gods, communicating their will to men. ”

“ When the thunder-peal comes, it will be too late to warn. The lightning will have come first, shrivelling the earth like a heap of dry grass, and heaven like a roll of old parchments, leaving you alone with your Judge; all the world there, and each one as much alone with Him as if no one else were there, seen through, searched through, scorched through with one gleam of the eyes that are as a flame of fire. ”

“ For between us and yonder still blue spaces oft roam the thunder and the storms, there in his hiding lurks the dark eclipse, and there are stored all snows and hails and lightnings that shall vex the earth for a million years. Gods of our hopes, how shall men's prayers crying from empty shrines pass through such terrible spaces; how shall they ever fare above the thunder and many storms to whatever place the gods may go in that blue waste beyond?'
But the gods bent straight forward, and trampled through the sky and looked not to the right nor left nor downwards, nor ever heeded my prayer. ”

“ For nearly 6,000 years the shadows of sin and death and all which goes with it have been upon the human race. It has been a long and dreary night. Nor has that night become less as centuries passed by. Never before have the shadows of the night, the shadows of sin, been so dark and horrifying as now. Never before has there been so much sorrow, so much weeping and suffering in the earth as during our generation. That it will not be always so God's holy Word assures us. The night will end some day. ”

“ To every human being this awakening comes sooner or later. To some, gradually and naturally as the dawning of morning, and the bright effulgence of its rays is not recognised until the darkness and clouds have already rolled away, and, lo, it is day. Upon others it bursts with the suddenness of a thunderstorm, and the soul cowers under the threatening peals, and is riven by the lightning flashes of conscience before it reaches the haven of calm and peace. ”

“ It was the setting sun of a day of astonishment, brightness, and tempest, lightning and thunder; but the great orb was sinking in disastrous storm and gloom—going down never to rise again. In this new picture, we have the rising sun climbing up its young morning sky; the hours of glory, of havoc, and of shame, are before him, and us. The innocent brightness of his new-born day is not yet gone; it will soon go.
Nothing can be simpler, or more everyday-like, than the body of the picture. ”

“ No angel, no man, but God Himself shut that door, and when once the master of the house has risen and shut to the door, the doom of the world is sealed; and the doom of that old world was forever sealed. The sun had gone down upon the glory of that old world for the last time. You can hear away off in the distance the mutterings of the storm. You can hear the thunder rolling. The lightning begins to flash, and the old world reels. The storm bursts upon them, and that old ark of Noah’s would have been worth more than the whole world to them. ”

“ Or like a storm-cloud from the sky, wherein is darkness and thunder and lightning; they put their fingers in their ears at the thunder-clap, for fear of death, for God encompasses the misbelievers. The lightning well-nigh snatches off their sight, whenever it shines for them they walk therein; but when it is dark for them they halt; and if God willed He would go off with their hearing and their sight; verily, God is mighty over all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The dead under the waters tremble; hell is naked, in the blazing heat, and destruction is uncovered; the north, the cold, descends on the world; the waters are bound up in thick clouds; the face of God's throne, the sun, is bidden by the clouds spread upon it; darkness has come, day and night are all one; the earth trembles; he has lighted up the heavens with the fiery comet, shaped like a crooked serpent, but he has struck him as Indra struck Vritra. ”

“ The sky is dark without a cloud! The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb, And proud knees unto earth are bowed. A change is on the hill of Death, The helmed watchers pant for breath, And turn with wild and maniac eyes From the dark scene of sacrifice! That Sacrifice!—the death of Him,— The Christ of God, the holy One! Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, And blacken the beholding, Sun. The wonted light hath fled away, Night settles on the middle day, And earthquake from his caverned bed Is waking with a thrill of dread! The dead are waking underneath! ”

“ Among the awful phenomena of nature, none have excited more terror than lightning and thunder. Some of the profligate Roman emperors, of whom history records that they procured themselves to be deified, confessed, by their trembling and hiding themselves, when they heard the thunder, that there was a divine power greater than their own—Cœla tonantem Jovem. The greatest security against the terrors of a thunder-storm, although no certain one against its effects, is that life of piety and virtue, which is the best guardian of every earthly blessing. ”

“ Never could I describe the strange Doom's-day shock with which such a sound would recall me from far depths of chaos to recollection of myself: for often-times, both waking and in nightmare, I did not know on which planet I was, nor in which Age, but felt myself adrift in the great gulf of time and space and circumstance, without bottom for my consciousness to stand upon ”

“ As the Spirits continue their song, accompanying the watches of the night, the dawn approaches to the ear of mortal men calmly and gently, but to the sense of Spirits, the march of the hours is heard as a storm: the gigantic rock-gates of the East creak fearfully; Phœbus rolls his chariot wheels in thunder; and eye and ear are startled at the strong coming of the day. ”

“ The destinies of men and empires are then portioned forth for the coming year, and, unconsciously to ourselves, our fates become minioned to the stars. A hushed and solemn night is that in which the dark gates of time open to receive the ghost of the Dead Year, and the young and radiant Stranger rushes forth from the clouded chasms of Eternity. On that night, it is said that there are given to the spirits that we see not a privilege and a power; the dead are troubled in their forgotten graves, and men feast and laugh, while demon and angel are contending for their doom. ”

“ Whose footfall is felt on the breach of volcanic
Sharp steeps that their fire has forsaken.
By a spell more serene than the dim necromantic
Dead charms of the past and the night,
Or the terror that lurked in the noon to make frantic
Where Etna takes shape from the limbs of gigantic
Dead gods disanointed of might,
The spirit made one with the spirit whose breath
Makes noon in the woodland sublime
Abides as entranced in a presence that saith
Things loftier than life and serener than death,
Triumphant and silent as time. ”

“ The pealing of thunder echoed nearer and nearer, the world was veiled in gloom, sounds never heard before began to roar about us, and when a vivid flash of lightning seemed to cleave the depths of the firmament, we imagined that we beheld countless shining forms gazing down at us. ”

“ You feel as if it were a struggle for life,—as if it were a war waged by the spirits of darkness against these celestial forms. The struggle is over: the darkness has prevailed. These mighty mountain torches are extinguished one after one; and cold, ghastly piles, of sepulchral hue, which you shiver to look up at, and which remind you of the dead, rise still and calm in the firmament above you. ”