un, the Moon and the Earth with her four Elements;
for stage there is the limitless background of Time and
Space, and the audience may be conceived as being represented
by Immanent Nature. Creation and Dissolution are her ministers,
twin forces of that divine everlasting Energy which brings
to pass the cycles of the Eternal Recurrence.

The action takes its course with a certain regard for the
laws and revelations of Science, but this compliance is only
such as poetry need observe. Despite the inherent and mystic
majesty of Matter,--too commonly reviled!--fantasy must have
leave, in such a work, to force its way past the barrier of
facts or to reshape them to its needs.

Whether the action begin with the impulse of Dissolution or
with that of Creation does not in any way affect the essentials
of the plan. The alternations of Life and Death, of Cosmic Night
and Day, must inevitably follow and destroy each other, like
the serpents in the ancient symbol. Yet I thought it desirable
to end this work with the larger and salient note of hope and
joy that rings out of the Birth that is Re-birth rather than with
the Passing which is but a recurrent preparation for that Birth.

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER.
London, 1911.

THE PASSING

The song of the Spirit of Chaos is heard on high above the aged
Solar Universe.

The Sun hangs in the black wastes below. His dazzling beams are
shorn away. He glows, but dimly, like an ember, with a red and
smouldering heat.

In their concentric rounds lie poised the planets, like weary-winged
cup-bearers, circling about their sleepless lord.

His fire, dull with death, wavers across their dim faces, even unto
dusky Uranus and lowering Neptune in the cold, outermost rings.

In the dark, all-surrounding void new constellations gleam on the
thrones of the heavens. The old are changed, deposed or dead.

Their figures, unfixed in the abyss, have been shifted like errant
sands of Earth.

The spirit of Chaos, from her uncharted tracts, summons her
ministrant powers of Death and Change. She beholds them blight
the worlds. Her presence enfolds destroyers and destroyed as with
a cloak.

The dusks and damps of dissolution spread out their lethal and
invisible wings.

The voice of the Spirit, like spheral music, flows out of the
darkness.

The orbs listen and are filled with a miraculous consciousness
and the soft lassitude of Death.

SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF CHAOS

THE staring vessels of