Saga of the North: Lyric Interlude Terrestrial -

Lyric Interlude Terrestrial

Pause, Watcher in the High-skies, below the moon-track.
Listen to the void-muffled voices of the planet:
Plaint of sibilant oceans, moan of the red-clouded Sirocco
Muffling the lions' roar among the shifting Saharan hills,
Drone of the monsoon through the palm fronds of coral atolls,
Clatter of thunder among the white peaks of the Hindu Kush,
Dying away with forked flashes over the sea of black clouds
Stretching from the walls of the Himalayas to the coast of Coramandel.
Thus age unto age the organ-song of the whirling Earth-globe
Blends with the high notes of meteors screaming across the upper air,
Playing fixedly the bass tone of the star unceasing,
Like the broken stop of an organ
Uttering itself alone to an empty cathedral.
Pause, Watcher in the High-skies,
A new note from the planet,
As if bell-wethers of gods fed through the star-pastures,
Comes the faint jangling of death-bells from the northern hemisphere.

Death-bells from Jerusalem and Cyprus,
Tollings from campanilles,
Death-bells following pilgrims across the Alps,
Death-bells from Paris and London Town,
Moving with low, silver tolling
Out of the mouths of the steeples,
Telling the track of the plague
Into the paralyzed northland.