I cannot remember what age I was when I first read this powerful poem by Lord Byron, but I remember that my heart was in my mouth as I waited for the resolution – would all turn out well in the end?
It describes a dream where
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space
But it did not end with daybreak, for
Morn came and went - and came, and brought no day
The people responded by lighting fires – everything was burned to bring some light back into the world, and the result was anarchy, famine, war & the total destruction of man’s humanity to man.
The world was void,
The populous and the powerful - was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless -
A lump of death - a chaos of hard clay.
Until – entropy
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave …
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.
In some ways the poem could be interpreted as an all-purpose description of how the world will end through the agency of man, whether by his direct action or as punishment for his sin. In our time perhaps an awful warning about climate change & global warming, but it could equally have served as a forewarning of nuclear winter for those alive in the 1950s.
It was published first in 1816, the year after the eruption of Mount Tambora, the consequences of which were far worse even than those of this year’s eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.
The whole poem can be read here
