{"id":824,"date":"2006-05-19T12:19:54","date_gmt":"2006-05-19T17:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2006\/05\/19\/darkness\/"},"modified":"2006-05-19T12:19:54","modified_gmt":"2006-05-19T17:19:54","slug":"darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/19\/darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

No time for quality blogging, so here’s a poem in honor of the Dark Energy Task Force<\/a> report — Darkness<\/em>, by Lord Byron<\/a>. (Line spacings added by me to make it easier to read on screen.)<\/p>\n

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
\nThe bright sun was extinguish’d, 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;<\/p>\n

Morn came and went – and came, and brought no day,
\nAnd men forgot their passions in the dread
\nOf this their desolation; and all hearts
\nWere chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
\nAnd they did live by watchfires – and the thrones,
\nThe palaces of crowned kings – the 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’s face;<\/p>\n

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
\nOf the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
\nA fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
\nForests were set on fire – but hour by hour
\nThey fell and faded – and the crackling trunks
\nExtinguish’d with a crash – and all was black.<\/p>\n

The 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;<\/p>\n

And others hurried to and fro, and fed
\nTheir funeral piles with fuel, and looked 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’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d,
\nAnd, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
\nAnd flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
\nCame tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
\nAnd twined themselves among the multitude,
\nHissing, but stingless – they were slain for food.<\/p>\n

And War, which for a moment was no more,
\nDid glut himself again; – a meal was bought
\nWith blood, and each sate sullenly apart
\nGorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
\nAll earth was but one thought – and that was death,
\nImmediate and inglorious; and the pang
\nOf famine fed upon all entrails – men
\nDied, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;<\/p>\n

The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
\nEven dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
\nAnd he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
\nThe birds and beasts and famish’d 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 answered not with a caress – he died.<\/p>\n

The crowd was famish’d 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’d 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’s aspects – saw, and shriek’d, and died –
\nEven 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 – a chaos of hard clay.<\/p>\n

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
\nAnd nothing stirred within their silent depths;
\nShips sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
\nAnd their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
\nThey slept on the abyss without a surge –
\nThe waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
\nThe moon their mistress had expir’d before;
\nThe winds were withered in the stagnant air,
\nAnd the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
\nOf aid from them – She was the Universe. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would appear, then, that Byron is predicting that dark energy will continue to dominate in the future, resulting in the ultimate heat death of the universe; no phase transition to a true vacuum, nor a Big Rip. He doesn’t mention the possibility that quantum fluctuations will produce new baby universes in the future, but perhaps that was another poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No time for quality blogging, so here’s a poem in honor of the Dark Energy Task Force report — Darkness, by Lord Byron. (Line spacings added by me to make it easier to read on screen.) I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}