The New Thanatopsis

I HEARD the voice of Ocean crooning low
Her mother-song, deep in her quiet caves
Under the rocky cliff, while to and fro
The seaweed swung, a cradle upon the waves:

Lo, I have made them all — the tribes of earth.
Out of my fertile depths they all have come.
Mother of living things, I have brought to birth
Midges and monsters alike from my teeming womb.

The moss and lichen that clung to their mother’s hand,
Close to the shore in sound of their mother’s call;
The wandering vine; the grass that covered the land;
The trees that strangled their mates — I have made them all.

Where are they now, those forests vast and dark,
Shrouding the earth in gloom, where never a glint
Of the sun came through? I sent the worm for their bark;
The fly for their leaf; the ant with its tooth of flint.

I am the mother of clouds. I sent my storms
To finish the work. The trunks came tumbling down
To be food for others. Over their prostrate forms
I piled my sands. The making of life went on.

It was not fit that gnats and flies should take
And rule by mere fecundity the earth.
Reptile and bird, to hold their swarms in check,
Out of my gravid loins I brought to birth.

My birds, that I had made to sail the air;
To walk the earth; to sport upon my breast!
What further offspring could I have more fair?
Life’s highest form is reached with you at last.

My reptiles — slender, graceful, swift as light;
Or mighty as a mountain moving slow,
Or cased in plates of armor for the fight —
Surely creation could no further go!

Where is he gone — the lordly dinosaur —
King of all life but only yesterday?
Gone with all nations of the earth that war
Upon each other. They will pass away.

Have I not seen them perish, one by one —
This warlike race of reptiles, strange, uncouth?
And after them the mighty mastodon;
The cunning tiger with the sabre tooth?

All these have had their day. All these have thought
That I who made them all could never make
A stronger, wiser. Fools! What I have wrought
I can create a stronger thing to break.

In sport at last I made to mock them all
A feeble, helpless thing, naked and weak.
He had no covering of plated mail;
No horn, no claw, no talon, tusk or beak.

He had no wing to flee his enemies;
No poison fang to bid his foes begone.
Lurking in caves, or hiding in the trees,
He watched the cave bear and the mastodon.

The air was not for him; he could not fly;
He could not dive; the sea was not his home;
Mountains and plains and rivers, earth and sky
Swarmed with his foes — and yet he conquered them.

No wings I gave him — he outsoars the birds;
No fins — and he outswims leviathan:
His feeble cry he fashions into words;
His fingers order all things to his plan.

He knows the hidden rocks that guard my coasts;
Over my thousand leagues he sends his call;
My realm he claims for his own; I have heard his boasts:
‘The sea is mine! I am the lord of all!’

Lord of it all! He has not worn his crown
A thousand thousandth part of the years that went
Before my giant reptiles laid it down,
And he took up the reins of government.

I am the maker of kings. I bid them reign;
I send them forth; I give them the sword they bear.
I am the breaker of kings. I take again
The crown I gave, for another king to wear.

Is this my final word — this puny thing
That sits with proud assurance on his throne?
Wait! When my time is ripe another king
Will rise to claim the sceptre for his own.

What has he learned of life that was not old
When saurians grappled in the seething scum
Of primal seas; when fold on scaly fold
They lashed the steaming marshes into foam ?

He who has fought with beasts a million years
Turns like a wounded snake to sink his fang
Into himself. The end of his kingdom nears;
He too will pass; his reign will not be long.

He will lie down with kings, and from the deep
Will come another conqueror. Below
A thousand rulers in oblivion sleep:
A thousand others come; they too will go.