Megalomania

    THE world is ruled by me and God:
    Silent we single from the crowd
    The ugly, mean: the fair, the proud,
    At one irrevocable nod
    Go down, go down and bite the sod.

    Here, where despised I sit alone,
    Almighty God hath reared His throne:
    Am I cast down, abject, afeard,
    To gaze within those eyes unseared
    By myriad lights of million suns
    Which roll relentless round His feet?
    Watch me—I smile, I hold his beard.

    Houses we crumble in our hands
    And shake their vermin down to Hell—
    Yea, all the proud indifferent lands
    That know me not for over-lord—
    For over-lord and God as well,
    Resistlessly their rests are hurled
    Beyond the ramparts of the world.

    Here in my freezing little room
    I rouse the innavigable seas;
    The screaming breakers black with doom
    Crush the strong ships against the coast:
    I raise my hand, sweep out the stars,
    And in the crash of smashing spars
    God, I and God laugh through the gloom.

                                        The Venture

162

            Then gazing in each other’s eyes
            We slide, we slide into a dream,
            While myriad worlds around arise,
            Slip past, and strow their myriad gleam—
            Phantasmagoria they seem,
            The thick dust of eternities:
            But awful, stony, thunder-shod,
            We trample down the firmament,
            For God is I, and I am God.

                                                              VINCENT O’SULLIVAN.