Fantastic hulls that never had birth
In the dreams of the boldest brain of Earth.
Downward in terrible power they came,
Armored with plates of smoldering flame,
Armed with might in the smithies of night,
Guided by beings merciless, wise,
Veterans drilled in the outer skies.
Now a greenish ray from the nethermost vessel shot.
Earthward it turned, judicial, unflickering, slow,
Till it looked on a fortress beset by hosts of the foe.
One glance of its eye, and—fortress and foe were not!
Then something gave way in my brain
With a fierce, revealing pain;
And I knew that, across the abysms of air,
After æons of human imaginings,
Creatures from some dread otherwhere
Had launched on miraculous wings
To abolish the near and the far.
I knew that beings from some strange star,
Hitherto out of the reach of our ken,
With resolute pinions unfurled,
And weapons undreamed till then,
Downward had swooped to erase
From the otherwise lovely face
Of the flower of a neighboring world,
