A SIGN
How shall I know when the end of things is coming?
The dark swifts flitting, the drone-bees humming;
The fly on the window-pane bedazedly strumming;
Ice on the waterbrooks their clear chimes dumbing—
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?
The stars in their stations will shine glamorous in
the black;
Emptiness, as ever, haunt the great Star Sack;
And Venus, proud and beautiful, go down to meet
the day,
Pale in phosphorescence of the green sea spray—
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?
Head asleep on pillow; the peewits at their crying;
A strange face in dreams to my rapt phantasma sighing;
Silence beyond words of anguished passion;
Or stammering an answer in the tongue's cold fashion—
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?
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