The End Of The Century.

There are moments when, as missions,     God reveals to us strange visions;     When, within their separate stations,     We may see the Centuries,     Like revolving constellations     Shaping out Earth's destinies.     I have gazed in Time's abysses,     Where no smallest thing Earth misses     That was hers once. 'Mid her chattels,     There the Past's gigantic ghost     Sits and dreams of thrones and battles     In the night of ages lost.     Far before her eyes, unholy     Mist was spread; that darkly, slowly     Rolled aside, like some huge curtain     Hung above the land and sea;     And beneath it, wild, uncertain,     Rose the wraiths of memory.     First I saw colossal spectres     Of dead cities: Troy once Hector's     Pride; then Babylon and Tyre;     Karnac, Carthage, and the gray     Walls of Thebes, Apollo's lyre     Built; and Rome and Nineveh.     Empires followed: first, in seeming,     Old Chaldea lost in dreaming;     Egypt next, a bulk Memnonian     Staring from her pyramids;     Then Assyria, Babylonian     Night beneath her hell-lit lids.     Greece, in classic white, sidereal     Armored; Rome, in dark, imperial     Purple, crowned with blood and fire,     Down the deeps barbaric strode;     Gaul and Britain stalking by her,     Skin-clad and tattooed with woad.     All around them, rent and scattered,     Lay their gods with features battered,     Brute and human, stone and iron,     Caked with gems and gnarled with gold;     Temples, that did once environ     These, in wreck around them rolled.     While I stood and gazed and waited,     Slowly night obliterated     All; and other phantoms drifted     Out of darkness pale as stars;     Shapes that tyrant faces lifted,     Sultans, kings, and emperors.     Man and steed in ponderous metal     Panoplied, they seemed to settle,     Condors gaunt of devastation,     On the world: behind their march     Desolation; conflagration     Loomed before them with her torch.     Helmets flamed like fearful flowers;     Chariots rose and moving towers;     Captains passed; each fierce commander     With his gauntlet on his sword:     Agamemnon, Alexander,     Csar, each led on his horde.     Huns and Vandals; wild invaders:     Goths and Arabs; stern Crusaders:     Each, like some terrific torrent,     Rolled above a ruined world;     Till a cataract abhorrent     Seemed the swarming spears uphurled.     Banners and escutcheons, kindled     By the light of slaughter, dwindled     Died in darkness; the chimera     Of the Past was laid at last.     But, behold, another era     From her corpse rose, vague and vast.     Demogorgon of the Present!     Who in one hand raised a Crescent,     In the other, with submissive     Fingers, lifted up a Cross;     Reverent and yet derisive     Seemed she, robed in gold and dross.     In her skeptic eyes professions     Of great faith I saw; expressions,     Christian and humanitarian,     Played around her cynic lip;     Still I knew her a barbarian     By the sword upon her hip.     And she cherished strange eidolons,     Pagan shadows Platos, Solons     From whose teachings she indentured     Forms of law and sophistry;     Seeking still for truth she ventured     Just so far as these could see.     When she vanished, I uplifting     Eyes to where the dawn was rifting     Darkness, lo! beheld a shadow     Towering on Earth's utmost peaks;     'Round whom morning's eldorado     Rivered gold in blinding streaks.     On her brow I saw the stigma     Still of death; and life's enigma     Filled her eyes: around her shimmered     Folds of silence; and afar,     Faint above her forehead, glimmered     Lone the light of one pale star.     Then a voice, above or under     Earth, against her seemed to thunder     Questions, wherein was repeated,     "Christ or Cain?" and"God or beast?"     And the Future, shadowy-sheeted,     Turning, pointed towards the East.