He took his proofs to Greenwich. “Sweep
the skies
Within this limited region now,” he said.
“You’ll find your moving planet.
I’m not more
Than one degree in error.”
He
left his proofs;
But Airy, king of Greenwich, looked askance
At unofficial genius in the young,
And pigeon-holed that music of the spheres.
Nine months he waited till Le Verrier, too,
Pointed to that same region of the sky.
Then Airy, opening his big sleepy lids,
Bade Challis use his telescope,—too late,
To make that honour all his country’s own;
For all Le Verrier’s proofs were now with Galle
Who, being German, had his star-charts ready
And, in that region, found one needlepoint
Had moved. A monster planet!
Honour
to France!
Honour to England, too, the cry began,
Who found it also, though she drowsed at Greenwich.
So—as the French said, with some sting
in it—
“We gave the name of Neptune to our prize
Because our neighbour England rules the sea.”
“Honour to all,” say we; for, in these
wars,
Whoever wins a battle wins for all.
But, most of all, honour to him who found
The law that was a lantern to their feet,—
Newton, the first whose thought could soar beyond
The bounds of human vision and declare,
“Thus saith the law of Nature and of God
Concerning things invisible.”
This
new world
What was it but one harmony the more
In that great music which himself had heard,—
The chant of those reintegrated spheres
Moving around their sun, while all things moved
Around one deeper Light, revealed by law,
Beyond all vision, past all understanding.
Yet darkly shadowed forth for dreaming men
On earth in music...
Music,
all comes back
To music in the end.
Then,
in the gloom
Of the Octagon Chapel, the dreamer lifted up
His face, as if to all those great forebears.
The quivering organ rolled upon the dusk
His dream of that new symphony,—the sun
Chanting to all his planets on their way
While, stop to stop replying, height o’er height,
His planets answered, voices of a dream:
THE SUN
Light, on the far faint planets that attend
me!
Light! But for me-the
fury and the fire.
My white-hot maelstroms, the red storms
that rend me
Can yield them still the harvest
they desire,
I kiss with light their sunward-lifted
faces.
With dew-drenched flowers
I crown their dusky brows.
They praise me, lightly, from their pleasant
places.
Their birds belaud me, lightly,
from their boughs.
And men, on lute and lyre, have breathed
their pleasure.
They have watched Apollo’s
golden chariot roll;
Hymned his bright wheels, but never mine
that measure
A million leagues of flame
from Pole to Pole.
