Darkness (poem)

After an encounter with the Thirteenth Doctor and Ashad at the Villa Diodati in 1816, Lord Byron read to an audience a poem which he'd written:


 * The world was void,
 * The populous and the powerful was a lump,
 * Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
 * A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
 * Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
 * And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
 * They slept on the abyss without a surge—
 * The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
 * The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
 * The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
 * And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
 * Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

The audience included his friends and travelling companions Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori. (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati)

Behind the scenes
Lord Byron recites an excerpt from his poem "Darkness" in the episode The Haunting of Villa Diodati. The unambiguous implication, by showing a shot of the Thirteenth Doctor over the final line, is that "She was the universe" is in reference to the Doctor. The poem is not referred to by name within the story.

The real-life excerpt is actually longer; some of the text is omitted on-screen, which casts the whole poem on famine, rather than Cybermen or the Doctor's travels. It reads:


 * Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
 * The populous and the powerful was a lump,
 * Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
 * A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
 * The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
 * And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
 * Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
 * And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
 * They slept on the abyss without a surge—
 * The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
 * The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
 * The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
 * And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
 * Of aid from them—She was the Universe.