Watchers Of The Sky Part 13

JUPITER

I that am sailing deeper skies and dimmer, Twelve million leagues beyond the path of Mars, Salute the sun, that cloudy pearl, whose glimmer Renews my spring and steers me through the stars.

Think not that I by distances am darkened.

My months are years; yet light is in mine eyes.

Mine eyes are not as yours. Mine ears have hearkened To sounds from earth. Five moons enchant my skies.

SATURN

And deeper yet, like molten opal s.h.i.+ning My belt of rainbow glory softly streams.

And seven white moons around me intertwining Hide my vast beauty in a mist of dreams.

Huge is my orbit; and your flickering planet A mote that flecks your sun, that faint white star; Yet, in my magic pools, I still can scan it; For I have ways to look on worlds afar.

URa.n.u.s

And deeper yet--twelve million leagues of twilight Divide mine empire even from Saturn's ken.

Is there a world whose light is not as my light, A midget world of light-imprisoned men?

Shut from this inner vision that hath found me, They hunt bright shadows, painted to betray; And know not that, because their night hath drowned me, My giants walk with G.o.ds in boundless day.

NEPTUNE

Plunge through immensity anew and find me.

Though scarce I see your sun,--that dying spark-- Across a myriad leagues it still can bind me To my sure path, and steer me through the dark.

I sail through vastness, and its rhythms hold me, Though threescore earths could in my volume sleep!

Whose are the might and music that enfold me?

Whose is the law that guides me thro' the Deep?

THE SUN

_I hear their song. They wheel around my burning!

I know their orbits; but what path have I?

I that with all those worlds around me turning Sail, every hour, ten thousand leagues of sky?_

_My planets, these live embers of my pa.s.sion, And I, too, filled with music and with flame.

Flung thro' the night, for midnight to refas.h.i.+on, Praise and forget the Splendour whence we came._

EPILOGUE

Once more upon the mountain's lonely height I woke, and round me heard the sea-like sound Of pine-woods, as the solemn night-wind washed Through the long canyons and precipitous gorges Where coyotes moaned and eagles made their nest.

Once more, far, far below, I saw the lights Of distant cities, at the mountain's feet, Cl.u.s.tered like constellations.. .

Over me, like the dome of some strange shrine, Housing our great new weapon of the sky, And moving on its axis like a moon Glimmered the new Uraniborg.

Shadows pa.s.sed Like monks, between it and the low grey walls That lodged them, like a fortress in the rocks, Their monastery of thought.

A shadow neared me.

I heard, once more, an eager living voice:

"Year after year, the slow sure records grow.

I wish that old Copernicus could see How, through his truth, that once dispelled a dream, Broke the false axle-trees of heaven, destroyed All central certainty in the universe, And seemed to dwarf mankind, the spirit of man Laid hold on law, that Jacob's-ladder of light, And mounting, slowly, surely, step by step, Entered into its kingdom and its power.

For just as Tycho's tables of the stars Within the bound of our own galaxy Led Kepler to the music of his laws, So, father and son, the Herschels, with their charts Of all those fire-mists, those faint nebulae, Those hosts of drifting universes, led Our new discoverers to yet mightier laws Enthroned above all worlds.

We have not found them, And yet--only the intellectual fool Dreams in his heart that even his brain can tick In isolated measure, a centre of law, Amidst the whirl of universal chaos.

For law descends from law. Though all the spheres Through all the abysmal depths of s.p.a.ce were blown Like dust before a colder darker wind Than even Lucretius dreamed, yet if one thought, One gleam of law within the mind of man, Lighten our darkness, there's a law beyond; And even that tempest of destruction moves To a lighter music, shatters its myriad worlds Only to gather them up, as a shattered wave Is gathered again into a rhythmic sea, Whose ebb and flow are but the pulse of Life, In its creative pa.s.sion.

The records grow Unceasingly, and each new grain of truth Is packed, like radium, with whole worlds of light.

The eclipses timed in Babylon help us now To clock that gradual quickening of the moon, Ten seconds in a century.

Who that wrote On those clay tablets could foresee his gift To future ages; dreamed that the groping mind, Dowered with so brief a life, could ever range With that divine precision through the abyss?

Who, when that good Dutch spectacle-maker set Two lenses in a tube, to read the time Upon the distant clock-tower of his church, Could dream of this, our hundred-inch, that shows The snow upon the polar caps of Mars Whitening and darkening as the seasons change?

Or who could dream when Galileo watched His moons of Jupiter, that from their eclipses And from that change in their appointed times, Now late, now early, as the watching earth Farther or nearer on its...o...b..t rolled, The immeasurable speed of light at last Should be reduced to measure?

Could Newton dream When, through his prism, he broke the pure white shaft Into that rainbow band, how men should gather And disentangle ray by delicate ray The colours of the stars,--not only those That burn in heaven, but those that long since perished, Those vanished suns that eyes can still behold, The strange lost stars whose light still reaches earth Although they died ten thousand years ago.

Here, night by night, the innumerable heavens Speak to an eye more sensitive than man's, Write on the camera's delicate retina A thousand messages, lines of dark and bright That speak of elements unknown on earth.

How shall men doubt, who thus can read the Book Of Judgment, and transcend both s.p.a.ce and Time, a.n.a.lyse worlds that long since pa.s.sed away, And scan the future, how shall they doubt His power From whom their power and all creation came?"

I think that, when the second Herschel tried Those great hexameters in our English tongue, A n.o.bler s.h.i.+eld than ever Achilles knew Shone through the song and made his echoes live:

_"There he depicted the earth, and the canopied sky, and the sea-waves, There the unwearied sun, and the full-orbed moon in their courses, All the configured stars that gem the circuit of heaven, Pleiads and Hyads were there and the giant force of Orion, There the revolving Bear, which the Wain they call, was ensculptured, Circling on high, and in all his courses regarding Orion, Sole of the starry train that descends not to bathe in the ocean!"_

A n.o.bler s.h.i.+eld for us, a deeper sky; But even to us who know how far away Those constellations burn, the wonder bides That each vast sun can speed through the abyss Age after age more swiftly than an eagle, Each on its different road, alone like ours With its own satellites; yet, since Homer sang, Their aspect has not altered! All their flight Has not yet changed the old pattern of the Wain.

The sword-belt of Orion is not sundered.

Nor has one fugitive splendour broken yet From Ca.s.siopeia's throne.

A thousand years Are but as yesterday, even unto these.

How shall men doubt His empery over time Whose dwelling is a deep so absolute That we can only find Him in our souls.

For there, despite Copernicus, each may find The centre of all things. There He lives and reigns.

There infinite distance into nearness grows, And infinite majesty stoops to dust again; All things in little, infinite love in man . . .

Oh, beating wings, descend to earth once more, And hear, reborn, the desert singer's cry: _When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The sun and the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, Though man be as dust I know Thou art mindful of him; And, through Thy law, Thy light still visiteth him._

THE END