Words for the Chisel (collection)/Eruption in Utopia

by Genevieve Taggard

Eruption in Utopia

There'll be a glassy paradise
Where all will have their crowns of ice,
And all will wear their robes of snow;
And the trees will bow, and the winds will blow—
And men will falter to and fro.

Men will prowl like timid beasts
Hungry after a hundred feasts
And break the bracken down in the woods,
Crash and fret and gaze and spy—
And look for nothing, low and high.

Then they will shiver and go to sleep.

To sleep, to sleep, and toss and sigh—
Sprawled they will mutter where they lie,
And sit up rigid, and wonder why.

They seem to stretch and never wake:
There is a glaze they cannot break
To the world outside, or the inner eye;
Oh, how they cry and cannot ache,
Oh, how they try and cannot weep,—
And there's nothing to do but shiver and sleep.

This weight of nothingness is more
Than any planet stood before:
Shades and empty clouds will gather
Tons of fret in weight of weather,
Till under the burden of this lack
Obeisant earth will warp and crack
Open a wound to bleed them terror.

Lava, lava. Slow and thick
Earth oozes, shudders and is sick.

How they will gape at the molten stone,
Take earth's illness for their own,
And groan. . . .

There they will stand, stormed by pain,
The obscene flood, the lewd stain.

Across the glassy zones of ice
Comes the long writhe and the slow hiss,
Sluggish red, the fire's kiss—
Snaky mark in paradise.

And who is this delivers them?
The serpent, yea, the very same
Who was their doom and shame.

Cast down your haughty diadem,
Your paradisal diadem,
Into the lava flame.

Now all the pent-up rivers run
In headlong silence under sun;
And miracle, O, miracle,
The silver fluid in their veins
Is moving in a miracle:

In them their own volcanoes seethe.
And their bright bodies breathe. . . .

And fixedly as in a spell
They watch the serpent writhe and wreathe
Over the earth and on to smite
The glassy sea—and the marble, white
Stone sea uplifts a mist of light.

O, what marvels they behold:
The mountains settling fold on fold,
Cliffs that melt and rivers gold,
And mists like angels rising slowly,
Singing holy, holy, holy.

They are not souls, but flesh at last,
And the rent earth, under the ice,
Dearer than any paradise—
Into the sea their crowns they cast,
Into the air go up their cries,
With joy they rend their snowy guise;

And now they wait, transfixed with awe,
By the white sea—by the red flaw. . . .

Listen to the voice
In the cloud
Listen to the loud
And suddenly ended
Outcry
It is my
Voice in the high
Moon-running ruin of the sky

If you will not listen
If you are afraid
I will go higher
Where you will not hear

A Note on the Type in Which This Book Is Set

This book is set (on the Linotype) in Elzevir No. 3, a French Old Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are indebted to Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, basing his designs, he says, on types used in a book which was printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden in 1634. The Elzevir family held a distinguished position as printers and publishers for more than a century, their best work appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs were not themselves type founders, they utilized the services of the best type designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Garamond, and Sanlecque. Many of their books were small, or, as we should say now, "pocket" editions, of the classics, and for these volumes the developed a type face which is open and readab but relatively narrow in body, although in no sense condensed, thus permitting a large amount of copy to be set in limited space without impairing legibility.

 

Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound by the Vail-Baillou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N. Y. · Paper manufactured by S. D. Warren & Co., Boston, Mass.