The Time Machine

I spoke of Time as if it were a road. A little machine—ivory, nickel, glass— A thing to slip the hour, to pass... Beyond the common load of days. They laughed. They doubted. Then they watched. And in that scrutiny, I felt the room go thin, As though the air... Had opened on a colder belt. There is no difference between Time... And any of the three dimensions of Space... Except that our consciousness moves along it. We are always driven on! Not forward by desire alone— But borne away, and gone. I sent the lever home. The lamps grew strange. The world ran long; the world ran pale. I shot through years like fire through gauze, And found the future’s hushed detail: The Eloi on the sunlit lawn, so fair, so frail, so nearly child. Yet underneath that idle ease... The old unease remained unsoothed, unguiled. Then downward. The dark beneath the green. The Morlocks, white-eyed in the night— The hidden labour, the buried strain, The teeth below the flowers’ light! Master and servant, eaten through; Civilisation’s polished sheen shone only where the deep... Had not yet worked its patient, pitiless machine! And farther on—more terrible still— The red sun, small and failing, set. The sea withdrew; the sands lay bare. The Earth grew old, and colder yet. At last I came back with my tale, And two white flowers in my hand; But not the heart that left the room... Only the scar of what I’d seen, and understand. There is no difference between Time... And any of the three dimensions of Space... Except that our consciousness moves along it! We are always driven on! Not forward by desire alone— But borne away, and gone! So let the little lever rest. For Time is not a hallway bright— It is the drift of mortal sight, The current carrying us on.