Watchers Of The Sky Part 12

Sir John pulled out Another stop. A little ironical march Of flutes began to goose-step through the gloom.

He saw that first "success"! Ay, call it so!

The royal command,--the court desires to see The planet Saturn and his marvellous rings On Friday night. The skies, on Friday night, Were black with clouds. "Canute me no Canutes,"

Muttered their new magician, and unpacked His telescope. "You shall see what you can see."

He levelled it through a window; and they saw "Wonderful! Marvellous! Glorious! Eh, what, what!"

A planet of paper, with a paper ring, Lit by a lamp, in a hollow of Windsor Park, Among the ferns, where Herne the Hunter walks, And Falstaff found that fairies live on cheese.

Thus all were satisfied; while, above the clouds-- The thunder of the pedals reaffirmed-- The t.i.tan planet, every minute, rolled Three hundred leagues upon his awful way.

Then, through that night, the _vox humana_spoke With deeper longing than Lucretius knew When, in his great third book, the somber chant Kindled and soared on those exultant wings, Praising the master's hand from which he, too, --Father, discoverer, hero--caught the fire.

It spoke of those vast labours, incomplete, But, through their incompletion, infinite In beauty, and in hope; the task bequeathed From dying hand to hand.

Close to his grave Like a _memento mori_ stood the hulk Of that great weapon rusted and outworn, Which once broke down the barriers of the sky.

_"Perrupit claustra"_; yes, and bridged their gulfs; For, far beyond our solar scheme, it showed The law that bound our planets binding still Those coupled suns which year by year he watched Around each other circling.

Had our own Some distant comrade, lost among the stars?

Should we not, one day, just as Kepler drew His planetary music and its laws From all those faithful records Tycho made, Discern at last what vaster music rules The vaster drift of stars from deep to deep; Around what awful Poles, those wisps of light Those fifteen hundred universes move?

One signal, even now, across the dark, Declared their worlds confederate with our own; For, carrying many secrets, which we now Slowly decipher, one swift messenger comes Across the abyss...

The light that, flas.h.i.+ng through the immeasurable, From universe to universe proclaims The single reign of law that binds them all.

We shall break up those rays and, in their lines And colours, read the history of their stars.

Year after year, the slow sure records grow.

Awaiting their interpreter. They shall see it, Our sons, in that far day, the swift, the strong, The triumphing young-eyed runners with the torch.

No deep-set boundary-mark in s.p.a.ce or Time Shall halt or daunt them. Who that once has seen How truth leads on to truth, shall ever dare To set a bound to knowledge?

"Would that he knew"

--So thought the visitant at that shadowy shrine-- "Even as the maker of a song can hear With the soul's ear, far off, the unstricken chords To which, by its own inner law, it climbs, Would that my father knew how younger hands Completed his own planetary tune; How from the planet that his own eyes found The mind of man would plunge into the dark, And, blindfold, find without the help of eyes A mightier planet, in the depths beyond."

Then, while the reeds, with quiet melodious pace Followed the dream, as in a picture pa.s.sed, Adams, the boy at Cambridge, making his vow By that still lamp, alone in that deep night, Beneath the crumbling battlements of St. John's, To know why Ura.n.u.s, uttermost planet known, Moved in a rhythm delicately astray From all the golden harmonies ordained By those known measures of its sister-worlds.

Was there an unknown planet, far beyond, Sailing through unimaginable deeps And drawing it from its path?

Then challenging chords Echoed the prophecy that Sir John had made, Guided by his own faith in Newton's law: _We have not found it, but we feel it trembling Along the lines of our a.n.a.lysis now As once Columbus, from the sh.o.r.es of Spain, Felt the new continent._ Then, in swift fugues, began A race between two nations for the prize Of that new world.

Le Verrier in France, Adams in England, each of them unaware Of his own rival, at the selfsame hour Resolved to find it.

Not by the telescope now!

Skies might be swept for aeons ere one spark Among those myriads were both found and seen To move, at that vast distance round our sun.

They worked by faith in law alone. They knew The wanderings of great Ura.n.u.s, and they knew The law of Newton.

By the midnight lamp, Pencil in hand, shut in a four-walled room, Each by pure thought must work his problem out,-- Given that law, to find the ma.s.s and place Of that which drew their planet from his course.

There were no throngs to applaud them. Each alone, Without the heat of conflict laboured on, Consuming brain and nerve; for throngs applaud Only the flash and tinsel of their day, Never the quiet runners with the torch.

Night after night they laboured. Line on line Of intricate figures, moving all in law, They marshalled. Their long columns formed and marched From battle to battle, and no sound was heard Of victory or defeat. They marched through snows Bleak as the drifts that broke Napoleon's pride And through a vaster desert. They drilled their hosts With that divine precision of the mind To which one second's error in a year Were anarchy, that precision which is felt Throbbing through music.

Month on month they toiled, With worlds for ciphers. One rich autumn night Brooding over his figures there alone In Cambridge, Adams found them moving all To one solution. To the unseeing eye His long neat pages had no more to tell Than any merchant's ledger, yet they shone With epic splendour, and like trumpets pealed; _Three hundred million leagues beyond the path Of our remotest planet, drowned in night Another and a mightier planet rolls; In volume, fifty times more vast than earth, And of so huge an orbit that its year Wellnigh outlasts our nations. Though it moves A thousand leagues an hour, it has not ranged Thrice through its seasons since Columbus sailed, Or more than once since Galileo died._

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 G.o.d 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.

Like harbour-lights the stars grow wide before me, I draw my worlds ten thousand leagues a day.

Their far blue seas like April eyes adore me.

They follow, dreaming, on my soundless way.

How should they know, who wheel around my burning, What torments bore them, or what power am I, I, that with all those worlds around me turning, Sail, every hour, from sky to unplumbed sky?

My planets, these live embers of my pa.s.sion, These children of my hurricanes of flame, Flung thro' the night, for midnight to refas.h.i.+on, Praise, and forget, the splendour whence they came.

THE EARTH

_Was it a dream that, in those bright dominions, Are other worlds that sing, with lives like mine, Lives that with beating hearts and broken pinions Aspire and fall, half-mortal, half-divine?

A grain of dust among those glittering legions-- Am I, I only, touched with joy and tears?

0, silver sisters, from your azure regions, Breathe, once again, your music of the spheres:--_

VENUS

A nearer sun, a rose of light arises, To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers, To paint my clouds with ever new surprises And wreathe with mist my rosier domes and towers;

Where now, to praise their G.o.ds, a throng a.s.sembles Whose hopes and dreams no sphere but mine has known.

On other worlds the same warm sunlight trembles; But life, love, wors.h.i.+p, these are mine alone.

MARS

And now, as dewdrops in the dawn-light glisten, Remote and cold--see--Earth and Venus roll.

We signalled them--in music! Did they listen?

Could they not hear those whispers of the soul?

May not their flesh have sealed that fount of glory, That pure ninth sense which told us of mankind?

Can some deep sleep bereave them of our story As darkness hides all colours from the blind?