Out of no quarter of the charted sky

flung in the bitter wind intolerably,

abrupt, the trump that sings behind the end

exults alone. Here grass is none to bend:

the stony plain blackens with rapid night

that best reveals the land’s inflicted blight

since in the smitten hero-hand the sword

broke, and the hope the long-dumb folk adored,

and over all the north a tragic flare

told Valhall perish’d and the void’s despair

to dwell as erst, all disinhabited,

a vault above the heart its hungering led.

The strident clangour cuts; but space is whole,

inert, absorb’d in dead regret. Here, sole,

on the bare uplands, stands, vast thro’ the gloom

staring, to mark an irretrievable doom,

the stranger stone, sphinx-couchant, thunder-hurl’d

from red star-ruin o’er the elder world.