In The High Court Of Justice

I saw this is a place at the world's end
When He was left alone without a friend

From every place, from far and near they came,
The blind and battered, and the lewd and lame,
The frightened people and the helpless crew
Who hid in cellars, and the stragglers who
Dodged here and there in corners of the earth
Cursing the sun, and they who from their birth
Were lap't in madness, raved and strode along,
Chanting in fury to a holy song
Their flighty wrath: and all the hungry folk,
Who through the world had rummaged, yelped and broke
Stiff to a run, for vengeance was in view,
And everyone knew what he had to do.

It was the Judgement Day, and so they sped,
These vagabonds who always had been dead
E'en when alive, and massed into the space
Between two stars: a deep and hollow place
Rolling immense, a swirl of blue and grey
Steeped out of eyesight: so it ever lay
Swinging in whispers, prickling to the sound
Till a wind's whimper, rolling round and round,
Jolted in thunder, or the dreary sigh
Of a dead man drummed madness on the sky.

Here they kept silence, every face intent
With a dumb grin upon the sun was bent,
Till sudden, huge and stately, came He fleet
Red from the sun, with fire about His feet
And flaming brow : and as He walked in fire
Those million, million muzzles lifted higher,
Stared at Him, grinned damnation, toned a yelp,
A vast malignant query, "Did you help?"
And at the sound the jangled spaces threw
Echo to echo: thunders bit and flew
Through deeper thunders into such a bay
The Judge stood frightened, turned and stole away.


The Lonely God, and Other Poems [1909]