Myth #22 & Myth #23: Deimos & Phobos

Lo! ’t is a gala night 
   Within the lonesome latter years!   
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
   In veils, and drowned in tears,   
Sit in a theatre, to see 
   A play of hopes and fears, 
While the orchestra breathes fitfully   
   The music of the spheres. 

Mimes, in the form of God on high,   
   Mutter and mumble low, 
And hither and thither fly— 
   Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things 
   That shift the scenery to and fro, 
Flapping from out their Condor wings 
   Invisible Wo! 

That motley drama—oh, be sure   
   It shall not be forgot! 
With its Phantom chased for evermore   
   By a crowd that seize it not, 
Through a circle that ever returneth in   
   To the self-same spot, 
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,   
   And Horror the soul of the plot. 

But see, amid the mimic rout, 
   A crawling shape intrude! 
A blood-red thing that writhes from out   
   The scenic solitude! 
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs   
The mimes become its food, 
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
   In human gore imbued. 

Out—out are the lights—out all!   
   And, over each quivering form, 
The curtain, a funeral pall, 
   Comes down with the rush of a storm,   
While the angels, all pallid and wan,   
   Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”   
   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

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Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. 
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
   Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
   Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'

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Thou wast that all to me, love, 
For which my soul did pine— 
A green isle in the sea, love, 
A fountain and a shrine, 
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last! 
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise 
But to be overcast! 
A voice from out the Future cries, 
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past 
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast! 

For, alas! alas! with me 
The light of Life is o’er! 
No more—no more—no more— 
(Such language holds the solemn sea 
To the sands upon the shore) 
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
Or the stricken eagle soar! 

And all my days are trances, 
And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy grey eye glances, 
And where thy footstep gleams— 
In what ethereal dances, 
By what eternal streams. 

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