Part 1 (1/2)
Betelguese.
by Jean Louis de Esque.
PREFACE
To the readers of this poem an apology is needed for affixing thereto a praem. Some friends of mine have been plaguing me beyond the restrictive line of Patience for the true cause of conceiving the accompanying collection of words, balderdash or what you will, some even a.s.severating with the eruditeness of an Aristole that it was a nebulous idea, an embryonic form of thought hibernating within the cavities of my sinciput's inner apex, the remnants of that wild phantasmagoric dream of ”vicious, vulpine labyrinths of h.e.l.l,” partly expounded in my ”The Flight of a Soul.”
Now to satisfy everybody but my friends I throw my prejudices to the winds and confess, to wit: That I, with the buckler of Will, wooed Oblivion on September the sixth at exactly 5 P.M., having been up at my desk mauling and drubbing the English language with a vengeance for thirty-six consecutive hours, and that I awoke at 12.30 A.M. that selfsame night with the entire contents of the accompanying----? (have as yet not decided in what category the critics will consign this weird hypotyposis of the Supernal) jingling through my tired brain. I set to work at exactly 12.45 A.M. and wrote until our esteemed companions of the nocturnal hours ceased their unloved music (mosquitos), 5.05 A.M., hied myself back to bed and hypothecated as many winks as Dame Slumber saw fit to allot to me, who am at continued war with her silent wand. The same tactics were employed during the succeeding fifteen nights, wherein I penned eight thousand one hundred and sixteen (8116) lines. This is the truth, the whole and integral truth, and nothing but the unexpurgated truth, so help me Muse (she's blind as a bat) and Satan, of whom I've writ in such an unbecoming manner that, henceforth, I must perforce seek my future Elysian in other haunts than those of the above named Cosmopoietic's own, for fear that his uncoped wrath may blast me into an ape-faced minstrel or, like one red-haired varlet draped with the cognomen of ”Nero,” use my unbleached bones for illuminating the highway to his insidiate lair.
To the readers this question may present itself, to wit: Why place h.e.l.l in the bowels of Betelguese? Why not the sun or moon?
In the first instance the former sphere is eliminated as a possibility on account of its nature. Being a huge nucleous ma.s.s of aeriform fluid, nothing containing animal or vegetable life could possibly exist either on or within its bowels. The moon, too, is excluded for the same reason as is our earth, it having at one time been a part of the latter, broken off by one of the giant planets long before the pleioncene era. Betelguese being a celestial pariah, an outcast, the largest of all known comets or outlawed suns in the universe; and, further, so long as h.e.l.l has not been definitely placed, why not figure this hybrid planet as a possibility?
Astronomers throughout the world remember the colossal outburst in the constellation Perseus that occurred on February 20, 1901, when one sun exploded, or two made collision with appalling force. It was observed through telescopes and could be seen with the naked eye in full daylight.
Both suns were destroyed as suns--that is, they were turned into thin gas and vanished from sight of the largest telescope within less than a year.
Had each sun been the centre of a system of eight worlds like our sun; and imagine each world, sixteen in all, to be inhabited with human beings; then they all perished in a short time after collision and died of what the astronomers call ”fervent heat.”
Vega, far more larger than our sun, appears stationary. Our sun, with its family of moons and comets, is moving toward it at the fearful pace of fourteen miles per second. At its present rate of speed--and if Vega is really a ”fixed” planet--then our sun would reach it in 320,000 years.
However, it is a known certainty that the quant.i.ty of matter that is invisible is so much greater than the visible that the visible may be ignored. There may, too, be hundreds of millions of dark bodies, extinct constellations far larger than our own sun. Any one of these could approach our solar system and annihilate it with its impact for, in pa.s.sing the orbit of the earth on their way around the sun, they attain a regular velocity of 26-1/2 miles per second. If one of these dark comets should overtake the earth and strike it, the velocity of impact would be about eight miles per second; but if it should meet the earth in a head-on collision, the speed, when it struck, would be forty-five miles per second, a momentum beyond the power of the brain to fathom--indeed, man can not think of sixty miles per minute. Let a solid nucleous collide with the earth and imagination would reel at the result.
The earth moves over 18-1/2 miles every second, and this added to or subtracted from 26-1/2 makes 45 or 8. If a comet should strike at right angles to the direction of the earth's motion the speed of collision would be 26-1/2 miles. But 8, 26-1/2 or even 15 would hurl destruction if large enough.
A visible change is taking place in the giant sun Betelguese. Its nebulae is slowly but surely disappearing. One hundred years hence it may be a dark planet, invisible to even the most powerful telescope. However, h.e.l.l will reign on, through eons and eons; and, if this sun, or any other, contains its kingdom, and mankind lives for another thousand years or more, those who should be so unfortunate as to miss the jagged heights to Paradise need not worry, for glozing imps will lead them to the fasthold of Typhon's weird home. Have no fear.
September 22d, MCMVII.
WHEN I AM GONE
What good is Fame when I am dead and gone, When in immarcescible regions My temple rots and soul doth storm and mourn As bones of mine adorn an early grave?
Who'll hear and know that I worked hard and long, That twin sighs and tears storm'd me by legions, My life, a sunless one--bleak and forlorn.
No ray of light whilst I in thralldom slave?
What good is Fame when I am dead and gone, When in fenowed abyss', stark and cold, I wend my solemn footsteps and atone, Whilst Fame my brow doth crown with its renown?
Who'll know that heart and soul bled on and on, That storm-swept aches and woes were mine untold, My life a waste, from which there stole a moan, No Aureole whilst I in sorrow drown?
What good is Fame when I am dead and gone, When far and wide my praise is heard and sung, And busts and marble-heads my deeds unfurl To mult.i.tudes that knew me not in flesh?
Not when I'm gone care I for Renown's dawn, Now, whilst I labour at Fame's lowest rung, Let me reap dame Approval's brightest pearl And sip its olpe as I my battles thresh.
BETELGUESE
Caressed by crystal dews and light Beyond the realm of scale and fin, Incarian Thought flits Fancy wings To hazards where a crimson urn Makes scarlet this eternal height Of sunless suns and reigning sin,-- Flame-decked this plain of warring kings Where poisoned fumes and beacons burn!
And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall.
Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom!
Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks and domes.
Where viscid mists and vulpine cries Rise from the moat of dungeoned gloom And rasp the stationed walls of night Until sequestered skulls and bones Are made to hear the moaning sighs That some mad t.i.tan, rayed in gold, Wrests from d.a.m.nation's siffling tomb.
And labyrinths of Horror's Home, 'Mid vapours green and aisles unsunned, Provoke each cursing mattoid's fold Until the night is changed to noon By cowled magicians on a dome.
Then wizardry, strange, unsummed, Reveals each varlet, Figgum's might: A hemless rabble from the South That some wild Trojan flayed and curs'd, Skirr thro' the Cauldron's broken lane And wing for implex strands and light.
There, where tapers flare on h.e.l.l's mouth This clan d.a.m.ns each giant Soldan first.
And Medeas in this vast plain, Who blink at yon dysodile lamps, Slap thenars and each bifurcous As javels drink from scyphus' bright.
Blood-curdling monsters on a rope That sate upon the d.a.m.n'd one's camps As h.e.l.l-winds gleam most glorious-- Each Vandal's music day or night!