<h2><SPAN name="page77"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>INTO SPACE</h2>
<p class="poetry">If the sad old world should jump a cog<br/>
Sometime, in its dizzy spinning,<br/>
And go off the track with a sudden jog,<br/>
What an end would come to the sinning,<br/>
What a rest from strife and the burdens of life<br/>
For the millions of people in it,<br/>
What a way out of care, and worry and wear,<br/>
All in a beautiful minute.</p>
<p class="poetry">As ’round the sun with a curving sweep<br/>
It hurries and runs and races,<br/>
Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap<br/>
Into the vast sea-spaces,<br/>
What a blest relief it would bring to the grief,<br/>
And the trouble and toil about us,<br/>
To be suddenly hurled from the solar world<br/>
And let it go on without us.</p>
<p class="poetry"><SPAN name="page78"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
78</span>With not a sigh or a sad good-bye<br/>
For loved ones left behind us,<br/>
We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge<br/>
Where never a grave should find us.<br/>
What a wild mad thrill our veins would fill<br/>
As the great earth, like a feather,<br/>
Should float through the air to God knows where,<br/>
And carry us all together.</p>
<p class="poetry">No dark, damp tomb and no mourner’s
gloom,<br/>
No tolling bell in the steeple,<br/>
But in one swift breath a painless death<br/>
For a million billion people.<br/>
What greater bliss could we ask than this,<br/>
To sweep with a bird’s free motion<br/>
Through leagues of space to a resting place,<br/>
In a vast and vapoury ocean—<br/>
To pass away from this life for aye<br/>
With never a dear tie sundered,<br/>
And a world on fire for a funeral pyre,<br/>
While the stars looked on and wondered?</p>
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