Watchers of the Sky eBook

URANUS

  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 gods 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 passion,
    And I, too, filled with music and with flame. 
  Flung thro’ the night, for midnight to refashion,
    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,
Clustered 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 passed
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,