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.
