Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Full-Circle

NOW that the gods are gone,

And the kings, the gods’ shadows, are gone,

Man is alone on the earth,

Thrust out with the suns, alone.

Silent he walks among

The unanswering stars of his night,

Knowing his hands are weak, that his eyes

Deceive in the light.

Knowing there is no guerdon to win

But the dark and his measure of mould,

Foreseeing the end of dream, foreseeing

Youth grow old.

Yet, knowing despair he is free,

Free of bonds, of faith, of pain.

What should frighten him now

Who has nothing to gain,

When he takes the place of the gods,

And chaos is his and the years,

And the thunderous histories of worlds

Throb loud for his ears?

Now that the gods are gone

The skies are dust in his hands;

Through his fingers they slip like dust

Blown across waste lands;

And his glance takes in beauty and grief

And the centuries coming or flown:

He is god of all ways and things—

And a fool—and alone.

The New Republic