Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Into Space

If the sad old world should jump a cog
   Sometime, in its dizzy spinning,
And go off the track with a sudden jog,
   What an end would come to the sinning,
What a rest from strife and the burdens of life
   For the millions of people in it,
What a way out of care, and worry and wear,
   All in a beautiful minute.

As ’round the sun with a curving sweep
   It hurries and runs and races,
Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap
   Into the vast sea-spaces,
What a blest relief it would bring to the grief,
   And the trouble and toil about us,
To be suddenly hurled from the solar world
   And let it go on without us.

With not a sigh or a sad good-bye
   For loved ones left behind us,
We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge
   Where never a grave should find us.
What a wild mad thrill our veins would fill
   As the great earth, like a feather,
Should float through the air to God knows where,
   And carry us all together.

No dark, damp tomb and no mourner’s gloom,
   No tolling bell in the steeple,
But in one swift breath a painless death
   For a million billion people.
What greater bliss could we ask than this,
   To sweep with a bird’s free motion
Through leagues of space to a resting place,
   In a vast and vapoury ocean-
To pass away from this life for aye
   With never a dear tie sundered,
And a world on fire for a funeral pyre,
   While the stars looked on and wondered?