." "Hush, my
Darling, I am here." "But, Mother, something so queer happened, the
room shook." Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is the matter?" Boom!
"Where is Father? I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and shrieks.
The house trembles and creaks. Boom!

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All his trials oozing
across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that is
his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and
the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the
lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms
the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the
night and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning stain on
the white, wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to it begin to
scorch. Boom! The bohemian glass on the 'etagere' is no longer there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The old
lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk and counts.
Boom!--Boom!--Boom!

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet of
silver. But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads.
The city burns. Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run
the flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing its
gold on the sky, the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and
lisps and chuckles along the floors.

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame creep along the
ceiling beams.

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at the burning
Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with people. They seek shelter
and crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and over all, slowly
and without force, the rain drops into the city. Boom! And the steeple
crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, again! The water rushes
along the gutters. The fire roars and mutters. Boom!

Lead Soldiers

The nursery fire burns brightly, crack