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b'Byron read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------\\n\\nDarkness\\nby George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 \\u2013 1824)\\n\\nI had a dream, which was not all a dream,\\nThe bright sun was extinguish\\u2019d, and the stars\\nDid wander darkling in the eternal space,\\nRayless, and pathless; and the icy earth\\nSwung blind and blackening in the moonless air \\nMorn came and went\\u2014and came, and brought no day,\\nAnd men forgot their passions in the dread\\nOf this their desolation: and all hearts\\nWere chill\\u2019d into a selfish prayer for light:\\nAnd they did live by watchfires\\u2014and the thrones, \\nThe palaces of crowned kings\\u2014the huts,\\nThe habitations of all things which dwell,\\nWere burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,\\nAnd men were gathered round their blazing homes\\nTo look once more into each other\\u2019s face \\nHappy were those who dwelt within the eye\\nOf the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch:\\nA fearful hope was all the world contained;\\nForests were set on fire\\u2014but hour by hour\\nThey fell and faded\\u2014and the crackling trunks \\nExtinguish\\u2019d with a crash\\u2014and all was black.\\nThe brows of men by the despairing light\\nWore an unearthly aspect, as by fits\\nThe flashes fell upon them; some lay down\\nAnd hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest \\nTheir chins upon their clenched hands and smiled;\\nAnd others hurried to and fro, and fed\\nTheir funeral piles with fuel, and look\\u2019d up\\nWith mad disquietude on the dull sky,\\nThe pall of a past world; and then again \\nWith curses cast them down upon the dust,\\nAnd gnash\\u2019d their teeth and howl\\u2019d: the wild birds shriek\\u2019d,\\nAnd, terrified, did flutter on the ground.\\nAnd flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes\\nCame tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl\\u2019d \\nAnd twined themselves among the multitude,\\nHissing, but stingless\\u2014they were slain for food:\\nAnd War, which for a moment was no more,\\nDid glut himself again:\\u2014a meal was bought\\nWith blood, and each sate sullenly apart \\nGorging himself in gloom: no love was left;\\nAll earth was but one thought\\u2014and that was death\\nImmediate and inglorious; and the pang\\nOf famine fed upon all entrails\\u2014men\\nDied, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; \\nThe meagre by the meagre were devour\\u2019d,\\nEven dogs assail\\u2019d their masters, all save one,\\nAnd he was faithful to a corse, and kept\\nThe birds and beasts and famish\\u2019d men at bay,\\nTill hunger clung them, or the dropping dead \\nLured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,\\nBut with a piteous and perpetual moan,\\nAnd a quick desolate cry, licking the hand\\nWhich answer\\u2019d not with a caress\\u2014he died.\\nThe crowd was famish\\u2019d by degrees; but two \\nOf an enormous city did survive,\\nAnd they were enemies: they met beside\\nThe dying embers of an altar-place,\\nWhere had been heap\\u2019d a mass of holy things\\nFor an unholy usage; they raked up, \\nAnd shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands\\nThe feeble ashes, and their feeble breath\\nBlew for a little life, and made a flame\\nWhich was a mockery; then they lifted up\\nTheir eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld \\nEach other\\u2019s aspects\\u2014saw and shriek\\u2019d, and died\\u2014\\nEv\\u2019n of their mutual hideousness they died,\\nUnknowing who he was upon whose brow\\nFamine had written Fiend. The world was void,\\nThe populous, and the powerful was a lump, \\nSeasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,\\nA lump of death\\u2014a chaos of hard clay.\\nThe rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,\\nAnd nothing stirr\\u2019d within their silent depths;\\nShips sailorless lay rotting on the sea, \\nAnd their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp\\u2019d,\\nThey slept on the abyss without a surge\\u2014\\nThe waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,\\nThe Moon, their mistress, had expired before;\\nThe winds were wither\\u2019d in the stagnant air, \\nAnd the clouds perish\\u2019d; Darkness had no need\\nOf aid from them\\u2014She was the Universe!'