It had often happened to him, he went on to say, to be interrupted in his observations by clouds covering the objects he was examining for a longer or shorter time.  In these idle moments he had put down many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they came into his mind.  His blank verse he suspected was often faulty.  His thoughts he knew must be crude, many of them.  It would please him to have me amuse myself by putting them into shape.  He was kind enough to say that I was an artist in words, but he held himself as an unskilled apprentice.

I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon the title of the manuscript, “Cirri and Nebulae.”

—­Oh! oh!—­I said,—­that will never do.  People don’t know what Cirri are, at least not one out of fifty readers.  “Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts” will do better than that.

—­Anything you like,—­he answered,—­what difference does it make how you christen a foundling?  These are not my legitimate scientific offspring, and you may consider them left on your doorstep.

—­I will not attempt to say just how much of the diction of these lines belongs to him, and how much to me.  He said he would never claim them, after I read them to him in my version.  I, on my part, do not wish to be held responsible for some of his more daring thoughts, if I should see fit to reproduce them hereafter.  At this time I shall give only the first part of the series of poetical outbreaks for which the young devotee of science must claim his share of the responsibility.  I may put some more passages into shape by and by.

          Wind-clouds and star-drifts.

I

     Another clouded night; the stars are hid,
     The orb that waits my search is hid with them. 
     Patience!  Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,
     To plant my ladder and to gain the round
     That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame,
     Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? 
     Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear
     That withers when some stronger conqueror’s heel
     Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;
     But the fair garland whose undying green
     Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!

     With quickened heart-beats I shall hear the tongues
     That speak my praise; but better far the sense
     That in the unshaped ages, buried deep
     In the dark mines of unaccomplished time
     Yet to be stamped with morning’s royal die
     And coined in golden days,—­in those dim years
     I shall be reckoned with the undying dead,
     My name emblazoned on the fiery arch,
     Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. 
     Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,
     Sages of race unborn in accents new
     Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old,
     Whose glories kindle