The Masque of the Elements

And throbbed in huts and palaces and fanes.
What power in me abode! what loveliness!

The three vast elements proclaimed me king,
Straight from the Sun I sank with gifts to bless

The world with living tongue and burning wing.
I came, and Man sat caverned with the brute;

I nursed him and he rose into a god;
I leave him and he withers with the fruit

Of ages on the ground his splendour trod.
Farewell, you airs and skies from whence I fell,

Fond Earth, farewell, and all thy beauty past--
And thou, old pulseless Ocean foe, farewell!--

All dead! I too shall die, though I be last.

Utter silence and utter lifelessness engulf the Globe; the frozen and adamantine bars of oblivion fall.

As the soft sibilant tones of the Fire-daemon flutter away, slowly the spheres recede and vanish in the clasp of Night.

Once more is heard,