The Eve of the War

No one would have believed In the last years of the nineteenth century That human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized As someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets And yet, across the gulf of space Minds immeasurably superior to ours Regarded this Earth with envious eyes And slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us At midnight, on the 12th of August A huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth Across two hundred million miles of void Invisibly hurtling towards us Came the first of the missiles that were to bring so much calamity to Earth As I watched, there was another jet of gas It was another missile, starting on its way And that's how it was for the next ten nights A flare, spurting out from Mars Bright green, drawing a green mist behind it A beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger He was convinced there could be no living thing on that remote Forbidding planet The chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, he said The chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, but still, they come Then came the night the first missile approached Earth It was thought to be an ordinary falling star But next day there was a huge crater in the middle of the common And Ogilvy came to examine what lay there A cylinder, thirty yards across, glowing hot With faint sounds of movement coming from within Suddenly the top began moving, rotating, unscrewing And Ogilvy feared there was a man inside trying to escape He rushed to the cylinder but the intense heat stopped him Before he could burn himself on the metal The chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, he said The chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, but still, they come Yes, the chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, he said The chances of anything coming from Mars Are a million to one, but still, they come It seems totally incredible to me now that Everyone spent that evening as though it were just like any other From the railway station came the sound of shunting trains Ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance It all seemed so safe and tranquil