"End of the Seers’ Convention" is a narrative poem in blank verse which is essentially a conversation or series of statements
delivered by various delegates at an imaginary conference of mystics and other representatives of the occult. After the narrator, or central consciousness of the poem, sets the scene, one of the practitioners of parapsychological phenomena offers prophetic observations on the future of humankind to which the others respond with derision or dismissal.
The incredible is casually established when the narrator remarks that he and his fellow seers were "walking and talking on the roof of the world." The focus of the meeting is described as a potential unification of all the realms that rule and influence life in the universe. The body of the poem consists of prophetic utterances from members of specific disciplines followed by qualifications, challenges, or rebuttals by members of different ones.
The first stanza contains a prediction by an
astrologer of a world which is much like the mid-twentieth century, when the poem was written, but is set in a distant era. A Gypsy, who represents the humane aspects of life in opposition to the scientifically analytic or
mechanical, denigrates the technical marvels as less significant than the question of who will control the forces created by technology. The astrologer appears uninterested in this question and returns to his initial vision of great global trends, remarking indifferently that a cycle of war and "victory" will follow, perhaps endlessly.
The debate among the participants seems to develop into a dichotomy between massive historical movements and their effects on individual human lives. When a crystal gazer calls the astrologer’s predictions "trite" and asserts that a more crucial question is "how to seize power" from an indifferent, self-preserving government, the astrologer expands the terms of the discussion by forecasting a time when people will pursue frivolous goals ("live on top of flag-poles") in an era akin to the 1920’s. His interest in the whimsical and the mechanical is met with derision by a numerologist and an illusionist, who are less concerned with human welfare than with their own specialities. The astrologer, however, remains as unaffected by personal concerns as he was by social ones.
In the longest stanza of the poem, the astrologer finally becomes involved in his visions. He shouts, and his proclamations seem to displace the cosmos itself. His final prediction is a confluence of the power of the state and the instinctual basis of human desire, a vision of a society unlike any previous one on earth which is a reversal of the lessons of most human experience. This fantastic revelation has little effect on the other delegates, who remain trapped in their own narrow styles of seeing. The positions that they propose are an implicit refutation of the astrologer’s dreams.
The final stanza is a mordant comment on the conditions that have called the seers to the convention. In spite of their (unproven) abilities, they have accomplished nothing in concert. As the poem concludes, they hold umbrellas to protect themselves from what may be as innocent as rain or as ominous as "dragon’s blood."