Poem by Madison Julius Cawein

Portents

 Above the world a glare
 Of sunset guns and spears;
 An army, no one hears,
 Of mist and air:
 Long lines of bronze and gold,
 Huge helmets, each a cloud;
 And then a fortress old
 There in the night that phantoms seem to crowd.

 A face of flame; a hand
 Of crimson alchemy
 Is waved: and, solemnly,
 At its command,
 Opens a fiery well,
 A burning hole,
 From which a stream of hell,
 A river of blood, in frenzy, seems to roll.

 And there, upon a throne,
 Like some vast precipice,
 Above that River of Dis,
 Behold a King! alone!
 Around whom shapes of blood
 Take form: each one the peer
 Of those, who, in the wood
 Of Dante's Hell froze up the heart with fear.

 Then shapes, that breast to breast
 Gallop to face a foe:
 And through the crimson glow
 Th' imperial crest
 Of him whose banner flies
 Above a world that burns,
 A raven in the skies,
 And as it flies into a Death's-Head turns.

 The wild trees writhe and twist
 Their gaunt limbs, wrung with fear:
 And now into my ear
 A word seems hissed;
 A message, filled with dread,
 A dark, foreboding word,
 "Behold! we are the dead,
 Who here on Earth lived only by the sword!"

1. In the Mountains
2. The Iron Cross
3. Above the Vales
4. Zero
5. Communicants

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