I

   “O Lord, why grievest Thou?—

   Since Life has ceased to be

   Upon this globe, now cold

   As lunar land and sea,

And humankind, and fowl, and fur

   Are gone eternally,

All is the same to Thee as ere

   They knew mortality.”

II

“O Time,” replied the Lord,

   “Thou read’st me ill, I ween;

Were all the same, I should not grieve

   At that late earthly scene,

Now blestly past—though planned by me

   With interest close and keen!—

Nay, nay: things now are not the same

   As they have earlier been.

III

   “Written indelibly

   On my eternal mind

   Are all the wrongs endured

   By Earth’s poor patient kind,

Which my too oft unconscious hand

   Let enter undesigned.

No god can cancel deeds foredone,

   Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

   “As when, in Noë’s days,

   I whelmed the plains with sea,

   So at this last, when flesh

   And herb but fossils be,

And, all extinct, their piteous dust

   Revolves obliviously,

That I made Earth, and life, and man,

   It still repenteth me!”