This is the way the world ends,

This is the way the world ends,

Not with a whimper,

But with a bang.

For as the first was a bang,

So shall the last be a bang:

And so shall end the beginning,

And so shall begin the ending,

And cast all light into darkness,

And cast all noise into silence.

Thence shall all darkness come to light,

Thence shall all silence be made loud,

To awaken the sleeping,

To awaken the sleeping.

The train I ride rumbles on:

    The steel tracks guiding, as it’s sliding

    On and on, on and on,

    From the mid of night is it gliding,

    Til the breaking of the morning dawn.

There it is that I espy 

With mine little eye,

One so small and so sweet:

A child of no great feet

In her height nor in her width;

So small, she is in her seat.

This question, though, plagues me,

This question plagues my mind:

For why is she?

Yes!  For why is she?

So small and so young,

So small and so young—

For where there is beauty,

It is wasted;

And where there is youth,

It is wasted;

And where there is pleasure,

It is wasted;

And where there is wisdom,

It is wasted;

Upon the scourge of the earth,

Upon the doleful scourge of the earth.

It passes unknown and unwept:

The breath of time respiring.

And still she speaks,

A sweet, little voice,

Calling out “goodbye”

To all she’s never known—

  To all the passersby,

Standing alongside the wayside;

To all the cars waiting there

At the crossing arms of time;

To all the flowers growing wild

With but the guiding hand of time;

To all the weeds growing tall,

As if there were only evil;

To all the grasses, paling yellow,

Dying down in the fields;

To all the lands that we pass

In the train upon the lain steel tracks.

“Goodbye!” she calls,

A humorist without wit

(And with only innocence),

As all the world comes down

Upon her little world—

She, so foolish and so stupid—

She, so wise and so understanding—

She, so ignorant and so reasonless:

Alive.

Yet, why so?

Yes, for why so?

Only to grow

And to respire

And retire,

Until all that which remains

Are the bones of decrepitude

And memories written

In a forgotten bank?

For she makes life:

Yes, indeed, and causes another to smile,

Who, likewise, is toward that very same end.

(Why the other, then,

Led by the child

To smile at the end

And never remember

Or recall

The end?)

That the end

Shall come—

Yea, it shall cometh,

And the beginning thenceforth

Beginneth. 

So begin what must be finished,

Lest I never come to that end.

Work fast upon my ledger,

And balance all my books,

For all I am must needs be done

Before it is undone.

Take my ticket back, I pray!

Pray, pray I for the end—

Yea, the end of time—

And seek resolution,

Whereby I might know

The simple sweet solitude

Of regeneration—or

Of nihilism,

And the end of my salvation,

Resting solely in damnation—

For none can save the damned,

If ever they be damned,

At the end of the beginning

And the beginning of the end.

The train that I ride rumbles on:

It is the train of time, in all sooth,

For as it glides upon the steel tracks of time,

It slips and slides, as the steely time passes.

And its destination is but further on,

Its determination is but further on—

Southward it travels, further on,

Downward it travels, further on;

And the sky outside has turned to black;

The day behind, the night has come;

And the sky turned to black is

Punctuated by no light.

The train or I will end my ride,

For I am a man,

And are not trains of men?

Boys and men with toys of tin

Ride the rails from here to then,

But recall no end of the end

Nor the begin of the begin.

And as the trainman is master of the train

(Though the tracks of time are really master of him),

So shall I, though ensconced in time,

Be the master of all that is mine:

I shall master the two steel hands of time,

Upon which all blithely glide,

And drive them fast into my very chest

Till I find the end of rest.

So put her to sleep,

While I lay down to rest,

And find that the world ends

This way, this way,

Not with a whimper,

But with a bang.