The Failing Moon

Last night I saw the failing moon
Scatter its petals through the sky,
And all the heavenly gardens shook,
As though a wind went by,

And all the petals of the sea
Cast upward on the pulsing sand,
Were white as at the touch of death,
That nothing can withstand;

Throughout the whole world, sick with dread,
Swiftly an aching pallor ran;
The world was dead, dead — all was dead
Since first slow time began.

That loving face Earth used to wear
Midst tender green and blue of flowers,
Of mortal fairness, mortal sweet,
Was but a dream of ours;

A childish fantasy of play
That turns to life some happy spot,
Thereafter dead, as long before —
The brightness lingers not.

For here beneath my trembling feet,
Earth's face shows lifeless, overcast
With shadows of some dreaming world,
Prophetic, or long past;

Some other dream, some other world
Gave life and passion birth,
And ours it is to love and live
And perish with the earth.

Ah, long ago, who was it cast
A thought into the void of space
That made the earth and made the stars
And made each little place

Aflame with life, and then forgot,
As children in a race,
That now we wait, as some old house,
For a familiar face?