Classic Poem

From the great Mount Wilson Telescope

A dead world — yes, that's evident.
No verdure now;
No living, breathing thing
In those gaunt craters —
Not for millions of years!

But never, you say? —
Never a green blade,
Never the first quick cell?
The big earth stole its atmosphere?
Nothing could live?
That gives me a creepy feeling —
It sends me reeling.

Listen —
Then is it there, the moon?
Was it ever there?
Can anything be
Till life creates it?

I see
That silver shadow swinging through the night,
I feel its ghostly beauty —
Therefore it is.
And the other suns have living worlds, perhaps,
Created in beating hearts.
But when life is gone,
When these little lives are gone, and I —
And I! —
Then surely all will be over,
The whole grand show:
The stars will be out in the sky;
The curtain, the thick gray curtain,
Will fall
Over all.

A dead world, rolling, swinging
Around the earth, around the sun —
Always dead, never begun!