Nirvana (Smith)
Poised as a god whose lone, detachèd post,
A eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks
Of finite years and those unvaried darks
That veil Eternity, I saw the host
Of suns and worlds, swept from the furthermost
Of night— confusion as of dust with sparks—
Whirl toward the opposing brink; as one who harks
Some warning trumpet. Time, a withered ghost,
Fled with them: disunited orbs that late
Were atoms of the universal frame,
They passed to some eternal fragment-heap.
And, lo ! the gods, from space discorporate,
Who were its life and vital spirit, came,
Drawn voidward by the vampire-lips of Sleep !
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1912, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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