Epitaph for the Earth
Posted by:
Dr. W.C. Farmer (IP Logged)
Date: 8 July, 2002 11:47AM
On Ron Hilger's recommendation I am posting a transcription of
"Epitaph for the Earth" -- copied exactly as written in form and
markings from the manuscript. I am sure CAS would have made some
revision in form for publication, had his impetus to write not
abated in this last years. The upper right corner has a note in
pencil for me - 1912 "or something like that" CAS
The manuscript was inserted in the front of the copy of Sandalwood
he gave me c.1958/9. This copy was #48 of the original 250
printed by the Auburn Journal in 1925, with textual corrections
by CAS and signed at the time of publication.(I just discovered
I cannot selectively underline - therefore, if you print a copy,
the words Epitaph and Earth are underlined, and the phrase
in the poem "the future sequences of Change" as well. As to
why the latter is underlined and the word Change capitalized
one may only surmize.)
Epitaph for the Earth
Somewhere in Space the disunited dust
That formed a visible comparted world,
Floats in unnoticed formlessness, nor mars
With stain or fleck the ethereal claritude
Of vacancy; nor with monads
driven,
Seperate, irrelevant, athwart the
suns,
Impedes the tangled multitudinous
passage
Of rays that cross each other like the
thrust
Of unrelenting swords. To touch
the tombs that
With granite mouths successive glut of
Life
At last are not distinguished from the
lips
Of earlier - crumbled earth. And man
himself -
An evanescent peak of foam that pointed
One wave, subsided now of matters' tide
Leaves but bequest of stories that he took
From forms long antecedent, that
were not -
As he; that shall not thus combine
again
In all the future sequences of Change.
With hope of some far-off, supernal
goal,
Changeless, and independent of the
years
He strove on low and shifting ways
and sent
Love's uninspired dreams ethereal-wing'd
before.
On summits that Achievements' laggard
feet
Scarcely approached; till on one lesser
peak
He knew his own futility at last -
Himself an immaterial trick of
Chance.
This manuscript provides an interesting look at the very young
CAS, and is a good example of his earlier handwriting: while not
as laborious and careful as his signature in Ebony and Crystal,
nevertheless retains the more vertical form which gave way to
the rapid and slanted form of his later writing. Some of the
capital letters at the beginning of lines are careful and somewhat
artistic, and differ from the same letter within the context of
the poem. How like many an adolescent nihilist who sees only
empty blackness ahead, yet is painfully concerned about good
penmanship, perhaps remembering the ruler across the knuckles
subconsciously.
Even now, sitting at the computer completing this little
exercise for you all(a Texanism!), my memories of Clark are
poignant and he, in a strange sense, is very present to me.