WHEN MY mind was released

from the black cavern of oblivion

and woke up into an intolerable surprise

it found itself at the crater of a volcanic hell-fire

that spouted forth a stifling fume of insult to Man;

it witnessed the long-drawn suicidal agony of the Time-spirit

passing through convulsions of a monstrous deformity worse than death.

On its one side a defiant savagery

and the growl of homicidal drunkenness,

on the other timid powers tied to the load

of their carefully guarded hoardings,

meekly settling down to a silent safety of acquiescence

after miscalculated bursts of impatience.

At the old nations' council-chambers

plans and protests are pressed flat between the tight-shut prudent lips.

In the meanwhile across the sky rush with their blazing blasphemy

the soulless swarms of vulture-machines

carrying their missiles of ravenous passion for human entrails.

Give me power, O awful Judge,

sitting on the throne of Eternity,

give me a voice of thunder,

that I may hurl imprecation

upon this cannibal whose gruesome hunger

spares neither women nor children,

that my words of reproach may ever rock

upon the heart-throbs of a history humiliated by itself,

till this age choked and chained

finds the bed of its final rest in its ashes.