If I saw farther, 'twas because I stoodOn giant shoulders," wrote the king of thought,Too proud of his great line to slight the toilsOf his forebears. He turned to their dim past,Their fading victories and their fond defeats,And knelt as at an altar, drawing allTheir strengths into his own; and so went forthWith all their glory shining in his face,To win new victories for the age to come.So, where Copernicus had destroyed the dreamWe called our world; where Galileo watchedThose ancient firmaments melt, a thin blue smokeInto a vaster night; where Kepler heardOnly stray fragments, isolated chordsOf that tremendous music which should bindAll things anew in one, Newton aroseAnd carried on their fire.Around him reeledThrough lingering fumes of hate and clouds of doubt,Lit by the afterglow of the Civil War,The dissolute throngs of that Walpurgis nightWhere all the cynical spirits that denyDanced with the vicious lusts that drown the soulIn flesh too gross for Circe or her swine.But, in his heart, he heard one instant voice."On with the torch once more, make all things new,Build the new heaven and earth, and save the world."
Ah, but the infinite patience, the long monthsLavished on tasks that, to the common eye,Were insignificant, never to be crownedWith great results, or even with earth's rewards.Could Rembrandt but have painted him, in those hoursMaking his first analysis of lightAlone, there, in his darkened Cambridge roomAt Trinity! Could he have painted, too,The secret glow, the mystery, and the power,The sense of all the thoughts and unseen spiresThat soared to heaven around him!He stood there,Obscure, unknown, the shadow of a manIn darkness, like a grey dishevelled ghost,—Bare-throated, down at heel, his last night's supperLittering his desk, untouched; his glimmering face,Under his tangled hair, intent and still,—Preparing our new universe.He caughtThe sunbeam striking through that bullet-holeIn his closed shutter—a round white spot of lightUpon a small dark screen.He interposedA prism of glass. He saw the sunbeam breakAnd spread upon the screen its rainbow bandOf disentangled colours, all in scaleLike notes in music; first, the violet ray,Then indigo, trembling softly into blue;Then green and yellow, quivering side by side;Then orange, mellowing richly into red.Then, in the screen, he made a small, round holeLike to the first; and through it passed once moreEach separate coloured ray. He let it strikeAnother prism of glass, and saw each hueBent at a different angle from its path,The red the least, the violet ray the most;But all in scale and order, all preciseAs notes in music. Last, he took a lens,And, passing through it all those coloured rays,Drew them together again, remerging allOn that dark screen, in one white spot of light.
So, watching, testing, proving, he resolvedThe seeming random glories of our dayInto a constant harmony, and foundHow in the whiteness of the sunlight sleepCompounded, all the colours of the world.He saw how raindrops in the clouds of heavenBreaking the light, revealed that sevenfold archOf colours, ranged as on his own dark screen,Though now they spanned the mountains and wild seas.Then, where that old-world order had gone downBeneath a darker deluge, he beheldGleams of the great new order and recalled—Fraught with new meaning and a deeper hope—That covenant which God made with all mankindThroughout all generations:I will setMy bow in the cloud, that henceforth ye may knowHow deeper than the wreckage of your dreamsAbides My law, in beauty and in power.
Yet for that exquisite balance of the mind,He, too, must pay the price. He stood aloneBewildered, at the sudden assault of foolsOn this, his first discovery."I have lostThe most substantial blessing of my quietTo follow a vain shadow.I would fainAttempt no more. So few can understand,Or read one thought. So many are ready at onceTo swoop and sting. Indeed I would withdrawFor ever from philosophy." So he wroteIn grief, the mightiest mind of that new age.Let those who'd stone the Roman CuriaFor all the griefs that Galileo knewRemember the dark hours that well-nigh quenchedThe splendour of that spirit. He could not sleep.Yet, with that patience of the God in manThat still must seek the Splendour whence it came,Through midnight hours of mockery and defeat,In loneliness and hopelessness and tears,He laboured on. He had no power to seeHow, after many years, when he was dead,Out of this new discovery men should makeAn instrument to explore the farthest starsAnd, delicately dividing their white rays,Divine what metals in their beauty burned,Extort red secrets from the heart of Mars,Or measure the molten iron in the sun.He bent himself to nearer, lowlier, tasks;And seeing, first, that those deflected rays,Though it were only by the faintest bloomOf colour, imperceptible to our eyes,Must dim the vision of Galileo's glass,He made his own new weapon of the sky,—That first reflecting telescope which should holdIn its deep mirror, as in a breathless poolThe undistorted image of a star.
In that deep night where Galileo gropedLike a blind giant in dreams to find what powerHeld moons and planets to their constant roadThrough vastness, ordered like a moving fleet;What law so married them that they could not clashOr sunder, but still kept their rhythmic paceAs if those ancient tales indeed were trueAnd some great angel helmed each gliding sphere;Many had sought an answer. Many had caughtGleams of the truth; and yet, as when a torchIs waved above a multitude at night,And shows wild streams of faces, all confused,But not the single law that knits them allInto an ordered nation, so our skiesFor all those fragmentary glimpses, whirledIn chaos, till one eagle-spirit soared,Found the one law that bound them all in one,And through that awful unity upraisedThe soul to That which made and guides them all.
Did Newton, dreaming in his orchard thereBeside the dreaming Witham, see the moonBurn like a huge gold apple in the boughsAnd wonder why should moons not fall like fruit?Or did he see as those old tales declare(Those fairy-tales that gather form and fireTill, in one jewel, they pack the whole bright world)A ripe fruit fall from some immortal treeOf knowledge, while he wondered at what heightWould this earth-magnet lose its darkling power?Would not the fruit fall earthward, though it grewHigh o'er the hills as yonder brightening cloud?Would not the selfsame power that plucked the fruitDraw the white moon, then, sailing in the blue?Then, in one flash, as light and song are born,And the soul wakes, he saw it—this dark earthHolding the moon that else would fly through spaceTo her sure orbit, as a stone is heldIn a whirled sling; and, by the selfsame power,Her sister planets guiding all their moons;While, exquisitely balanced and controlledIn one vast system, moons and planets wheeledAround one sovran majesty, the sun.
Light and more light! The spark from heaven was there,The flash of that reintegrating fireFlung from heaven's altars, where all light is born,To feed the imagination of mankindWith vision, and reveal all worlds in one.But let no dreamer dream that his great workSprang, armed, like Pallas from the Thunderer's brain.With infinite patience he must test and proveHis vision now, in those clear courts of TruthWhose absolute laws (bemocked by shallower mindsAs less than dreams, less than the faithless faithThat fears the Truth, lest Truth should slay the dream)Are man's one guide to his transcendent heaven;For there's no wandering splendour in the soul,But in the highest heaven of all is oneWith absolute reality. None can climbBack to that Fount of Beauty but through pain.Long, long he toiled, comparing first the curvesTraced by the cannon-ball as it soared and fellWith that great curving road across the skyTraced by the sailing moon.Was earth a loadstoneHolding them to their paths by that dark forceWhose mystery men have cloaked beneath a name?Yet, when he came to test and prove, he foundThat all the great deflections of the moon,Her shining cadences from the path direct,Were utterly inharmonious with the lawOf that dark force, at such a distance acting,Measured from earth's own centre….For three long years, Newton withheld his hopeUntil that day when light was brought from France,New light, new hope, in one small glistening fact,Clear-cut as any diamond; and to himLoaded with all significance, like the pointOf light that shows where constellations burn.Picard in France—all glory to her nameWho is herself a light among all lands—Had measured earth's diameter once moreWith exquisite precision.To the throng,Those few corrected ciphers, his results,Were less than nothing; yet they changed the world.For Newton seized them and, with trembling hands,Began to work his problem out anew.Then, then, as on the page those figures turnedTo hieroglyphs of heaven, and he beheldThe moving moon, with awful cadencesFalling into the path his law ordained,Even to the foot and second, his hand shookAnd dropped the pencil."Work it out for me,"He cried to those around him; for the weightOf that celestial music overwhelmed him;And, on his page, those burning hieroglyphsWere Thrones and Principalities and Powers…For far beyond, immeasurably farBeyond our sun, he saw that river of sunsWe call the Milky Way, that glittering hostPowdering the night, each grain of solar blazeDivided from its neighbour by a gulfToo wide for thought to measure; each a sunHuger than ours, with its own fleet of worlds,Visible and invisible. Those bright throngsThat seemed dispersed like a defeated hostThrough blindly wandering skies, now, at the wordOf one great dreamer, height o'er height revealedHints of a vaster order, and moved onIn boundless intricacies of harmonyAround one centre, deeper than all suns,The burning throne of God.
He could not sleep. That intellect, whose wingsDared the cold ultimate heights of Space and TimeSank, like a wounded eagle, with dazed eyesBack, headlong through the clouds to throb on earth.What shaft had pierced him? That which also piercedHis great forebears—the hate of little men.They flocked around him, and they flung their dustInto the sensitive eyes and laughed to seeHow dust could blind them.If one prickling grainCould so put out his vision and so tormentThat delicate brain, what weakness! How the mindThat seemed to dwarf us, dwindles! Is he mad?So buzzed the fools, whose ponderous mental wheelsNor dust, nor grit, nor stones, nor rocks could irkEven for an instant.Newton could not sleep,But all that careful malice could designWas blindly fostered by well-meaning folly,And great sane folk like Mr. Samuel PepysCanvassed his weakness and slept sound all night.For little Samuel with his rosy faceCame chirping into a coffee-house one dayLike a plump robin, "Sir, the unhappy stateOf Mr. Isaac Newton grieves me much.Last week I had a letter from him, filledWith strange complainings, very curious hints,Such as, I grieve to say, are common signs—I have observed it often—of worse to come.He said that he could neither eat nor sleepBecause of all the embroilments he was in,Hinting at nameless enemies. Then he beggedMy pardon, very strangely. I believePhysicians would confirm me in my fears.'Tis very sad…. Only last night, I foundAmong my papers certain lines composedBy—whom d'you think?—My lord of Halifax(Or so dear Mrs. Porterhouse assured me)Expressing, sir, the uttermost satisfactionIn Mr. Newton's talent. Sir, he wroteAnswering the charge that science would put outThe light of beauty, these very handsome lines:
'When Newton walked by Witham streamThere fell no chilling shadeTo blight the drifting naiad's dreamOr make her garland fade.
The mist of sun was not less brightThat crowned Urania's hair.He robbed it of its colder light,But left the rainbow there.'
They are very neat and handsome, you'll agree.Solid in sense as Dryden at his best,And smooth as Waller, but with something more,—That touch of grace, that airier eleganceWhich only rank can give.'Tis very sadThat one so nobly praised should—well, no matter!—I am told, sir, that these troubles all beganAt Cambridge, when his manuscripts were burned.He had been working, in his curious way,All through the night; and, in the morning greynessWent down to chapel, leaving on his deskA lighted candle. You can imagine it,—A sadly sloven altar to his Muse,Littered with papers, cups, and greasy platesOf untouched food. I am told that he would eatHis Monday's breakfast, sir, on Tuesday morning,Such was his absent way!When he returned,He found that Diamond (his little dogNamed Diamond, for a black patch near his tail)Had overturned the candle. All his workWas burned to ashes.It struck him to the quick,Though, when his terrier fawned about his feet,He showed no anger. He was heard to say,'O Diamond, Diamond, little do you know…'But, from that hour, ah well, we'll say no more."
Halley was there that day, and spoke up sharply,"Sir, there are hints and hints! Do youmeanmore?"—"I do, sir," chirruped Samuel, mightily pleasedTo find all eyes, for once, on his fat face."I fear his intellects are disordered, sir."—"Good! That's an answer! I can deal with that.But tell me first," quoth Halley, "why he wroteThat letter, a week ago, to Mr. Pepys."—"Why, sir," piped Samuel, innocent of the trap,"I had an argument in this coffee-houseLast week, with certain gentlemen, on the lawsOf chance, and what fair hopes a man might haveOf throwing six at dice. I happened to sayThat Mr. Isaac Newton was my friend,And promised I would sound him.""Sir," said Halley,"You'll pardon me, but I forgot to tell youI heard, a minute since, outside these doors,A very modish woman of the town,Or else a most delicious lady of fashion,A melting creature with a bold black eye,A bosom like twin doves; and, sir, a mouthLike a Turk's dream of Paradise. She cooed,'Is Mr. Pepys within?' I greatly fearThat they denied you to her!"Off ran Pepys!"A hint's a hint," laughed Halley, "and so to bed.But, as for Isaac Newton, let me say,Whatever his embroilments were, he solvedWith just one hour of thought, not long agoThe problem set by Leibnitz as a challengeTo all of Europe. He published his resultAnonymously, but Leibnitz, when he saw it,Cried out, at once, old enemy as he was,'That's Newton, none but Newton! From this clawI know the old lion, in his midnight lair.'"
(Sir Isaac Newton writes to Mrs. Vincent at Woolthorpe.)
Your letter, on my eightieth birthday, wakesMemories, like violets, in this London gloom.You have never failed, for more than three-score yearsTo send these annual greetings from the hauntsWhere you and I were boy and girl together.A day must come-it cannot now be far—When I shall have no power to thank you for them,So let me tell you now that, all my life,They have come to me with healing in their wingsLike birds from home, birds from the happy woodsAbove the Witham, where you walked with meWhen you and I were young.Do you rememberOld Barley—how he tried to teach us drawing?He found some promise, I believe, in you,But quite despaired of me.I treasure allThose little sketches that you sent to meEach Christmas, carrying each some glimpse of home.There's one I love that shows the narrow laneBehind the schoolhouse, where I had that boutOf schoolboy fisticuffs. I have never knownMore pleasure, I believe, than when I beatThat black-haired bully and won, for my reward,Those April smiles from you.I see you stillStanding among the fox-gloves in the hedge;And just behind you, in the field, I knowThere was a patch of aromatic flowers,—Rest-harrow, was it? Yes; their tangled rootsPluck at the harrow; halt the sharp harrow of thought,Even in old age. I never breathe their scentBut I am back in boyhood, dreaming thereOver some book, among the diligent bees,Until you join me, and we dream together.They called me lazy, then. Oddly enoughIt was that fight that stirred my mind to beatMy bully at his books, and head the school;Blind rivalry, at first. By such fond tricksThe invisible Power that shapes us—not ourselves—Punishes, teaches, leads us gently onLike children, all our lives, until we graspA sudden meaning and are born, through deathInto full knowledge that our Guide was Love.Another picture shows those woods of ours,Around whose warm dark edges in the springPrimroses, knots of living sunlight, woke;And, always, you, their radiant shepherdessFrom Elfland, lead them rambling back for me,The dew still clinging to their golden fleece,Through these grey memory-mists.Another showsMy old sun-dial. You say that it is knownAs "Isaac's dial" still. I took great painsTo set it rightly. If it has not shifted'Twill mark the time long after I am gone;Not like those curious water-clocks I made.Do you remember? They worked well at first;But the least particles in the water cloggedThe holes through which it dripped; and so, one day,We two came home so late that we were sentSupperless to our beds; and suffered muchFrom the world's harshness, as we thought it then.Would God that we might taste that harshness now.
I cannot send you what you've sent to me;And so I wish you'll never thank me moreFor those poor gifts I have sent from year to year.I send another, and hope that you can use itTo buy yourself those comforts which you needThis Christmas-time.How strange it is to wakeAnd find that half a century has gone by,With all our endless youth.They talk to meOf my discoveries, prate of undying fameToo late to help me. Anything I achievedWas done through work and patience; and the menWho sought quick roads to glory for themselvesWere capable of neither. So I wonTheir hatred, and it often hampered me,Because it vexed my mind.This world of oursWould give me all, now I have ceased to want it;For I sit here, alone, a sad old man,Sipping his orange-water, nodding to sleep,Not caring any more for aught they say,Not caring any more for praise or blame;But dreaming-things we dreamed of, long ago,In childhood.You and I had laughed awayThat boy and girl affair. We were too poorFor anything but laughter.I am old;And you, twice wedded and twice widowed, stillRetain, through all your nearer joys and griefs,The old affection. Vaguely our blind old handsGrope for each other in this growing darkAnd deepening loneliness,—to say "good-bye."Would that my words could tell you all my heart;But even my words grow old.Perhaps these lines,Written not long ago, may tell you more.I have no skill in verse, despite the praiseYour kindness gave me, once; but since I wroteThinking of you, among the woods of home,My heart was in them. Let them turn to yours:
_Give me, for friends, my own true folkWho kept the very word they spoke;Whose quiet prayers, from day to day,Have brought the heavens about my way.
Not those whose intellectual prideWould quench the only lights that guide;Confuse the lines 'twixt good and illThen throne their own capricious will;
Not those whose eyes in mockery scanThe simpler hopes and dreams of man;Not those keen wits, so quick to hurt,So swift to trip you in the dirt.
Not those who'd pluck your mystery out,Yet never saw your last redoubt;Whose cleverness would kill the songDead at your heart, then prove you wrong.
Give me those eyes I used to knowWhere thoughts like angels come and go;—Not glittering eyes, nor dimmed by books,But eyes through which the deep soul looks.
Give me the quiet hands and faceThat never strove for fame and place;The soul whose love, so many a dayHas brought the heavens about my way._
Was it a dream, that low dim-lighted roomWith that dark periwigged phantom of Dean SwiftWriting, beside a fire, to one he loved,—Beautiful Catherine Barton, once the lightOf Newton's house, and his half-sister's child?Yes, Catherine Barton, I am brave enoughTo face this pale, unhappy, wistful ghostOf our departed friendship.It was ISavage and mad, a snarling kennel of sins,"Your Holiness," as you called me, with that smileWhich even your ghost would quietly turn on me—Who raised it up. It has no terrors, dear.And I shall never lay it while I live.You write to me. You think I have the powerTo shield the fame of Newton from a lie.Poor little ghost! You think I hold the keysNot only of Parnassus, then, but hell.
There is a tale abroad that Newton owedHis public office to Lord Halifax,Your secret lover. Coarseness, as you know,Is my peculiar privilege. I'll be plain,And let them wince who are whispering in the dark.They are hinting that he gained his public postThrough you, his flesh and blood; and that he knewYou were his patron's mistress!Yes, I knowThe coffee-house that hatched it—to be scotched,Nay, killed, before one snuff-box could say "snap,"Had not one cold malevolent face been thereListening,—that crystal-minded lover of truth,That lucid enemy of all lies,—Voltaire.I am told he is doing much to spread the lightOf Newton's great discoveries, there, in France.There's little fear that France, whose clear keen eyesHave missed no morning in the realm of thought,Would fail to see it; and smaller need to liftA brand from hell to illume the light from heaven.You fear he'll print his lie. No doubt of that.I can foresee the phrase, as Halley sawThe advent of his comet,—jolie niece,Assez amiable,… then he'll give your nameAsMadame Conduit, adding just that spiceOf infidelity that the dates admitTo none but these truth-lovers. It will be bestNot to enlighten him, or he'll change his taleAnd make an answer difficult. Let him printThis truth as he conceives it, and you'll needNo more defence.All history then shall damn his death-cold lieAnd show you for the laughing child you wereWhen Newton won his office.For yourselfYou say you have no fear. Your only thoughtIs that they'll soil his fame. Ah yes, they'll try,But they'll not hurt it. For all time to comeIt stands there, firm as marble and as pure.They can do nothing that the sun and rainWill not erase at last. Not even VoltaireCan hurt that noble memory. Think of himAs of a viper writhing at the baseOf some great statue. Let the venomous tongueFlicker against that marble as it mayIt cannot wound it.I am far more grievedFor you, who sit there wondering now, too late,If it were some suspicion, some dark hintNewton had heard that robbed him of his sleep,And almost broke his mind up. I recallHow the town buzzed that Newton had gone mad.You copy me that sad letter which he wroteTo Locke, wherein he begs him to forgiveThe hard words he had spoken, thinking LockeHad tried to embroil him, as he says, with women;A piteous, humble letter.Had he heardSome hint of scandal that he could not breatheTo you, because he honoured you too well?I cannot tell. His mind was greatly troubledWith other things. At least, you need not fearThat Newton thought it true. He walked aloof,Treading a deeper stranger world than ours.Have you not told me how he would forgetEven to eat and drink, when he was wraptIn those miraculous new discoveriesAnd, under this wild maze of shadow and sunBeheld—though not the Master Player's hand—The keys from which His organ music rolls,Those visible symphonies of wild cloud and lightWhich clothe the invisible world for mortal eyes.I have heard that Leibnitz whispered to the courtThat Newton was an "atheist." Leibnitz knewHis audience. He could stoop to it.Fools have saidThat knowledge drives out wonder from the world;They'll say it still, though all the dust's ablazeWith miracles at their feet; while Newton's lawsForetell that knowledge one day shall be song,And those whom Truth has taken to her heartFind that it beats in music.Even this ageHas glimmerings of it. Newton never sawHis own full victory; but at least he knewThat all the world was linked in one again;And, if men found new worlds in years to come,These too must join the universal song.That's why true poets love him; and you'll findTheir love will cancel all that hate can do.They are the sentinels of the House of Fame;And that quick challenging couplet from the penOf Alexander Pope is answer enoughTo all those whisperers round the outer doors.There's Addison, too. The very spirit and thoughtOf Newton moved to music when he wroteThe Spacious Firmament. Some keen-eyed age to comeWill say, though Newton seldom wrote a verse,That music was his own and speaks his faith.
And, last, for those who doubt his faith in GodAnd man's immortal destiny, there remainsThe granite monument of his own great work,That dark cathedral of man's intellect,The vast "Principia," pointing to the skies,Wherein our intellectual king proclaimedThe task of science,—through this wildernessOf Time and Space and false appearances,To make the path straight from effect to cause,Until we come to that First Cause of all,The Power, above, beyond the blind machine,The Primal Power, the originating Power,Which cannot be mechanical. He affirmed itWith absolute certainty. Whence arises allThis order, this unbroken chain of law,This human will, this death-defying love?Whence, but from some divine transcendent Power,Not less, but infinitely more than these,Because it is their Fountain and their Guide.Fools in their hearts have said, "Whence comes this Power,Why throw the riddle back this one stage more?"And Newton, from a height above all worldsAnswered and answers still:"This universeExists, and by that one impossible factDeclares itself a miracle; postulatesAn infinite Power within itself, a WholeGreater than any part, a UnitySustaining all, binding all worlds in one.This is the mystery, palpable here and now.'Tis not the lack of links within the chainFrom cause to cause, but that the chain exists.That's the unfathomable mystery,The one unquestioned miracle that weknow,Implying every attribute of God,The ultimate, absolute, omnipresent Power,In its own being, deep and high as heaven.But men still trace the greater to the less,Account for soul with flesh and dreams with dust,Forgetting in their manifold world the One,In whom for every splendour shining hereAbides an equal power behind the veil.Was the eye contrived by blindly moving atoms,Or the still-listening ear fulfilled with musicBy forces without knowledge of sweet sounds?Are nerves and brain so sensitively fashionedThat they convey these pictures of the worldInto the very substance of our life,While That from which we came, the Power that made us,Is drowned in blank unconsciousness of all?Does it not from the things we know appearThat there exists a Being, incorporeal,Living, intelligent, who in infinite space,As in His infinite sensory, perceivesThings in themselves, by His immediate presenceEverywhere? Of which things, we see no moreThan images only, flashed through nerves and brainTo our small sensories?What is all science thenBut pure religion, seeking everywhereThe true commandments, and through many formsThe eternal power that binds all worlds in one?It is man's age-long struggle to draw nearHis Maker, learn His thoughts, discern His law,—A boundless task, in whose infinitude,As in the unfolding light and law of love.Abides our hope, and our eternal joy.I know not how my work may seem to others—"So wrote our mightiest mind—"But to myselfI seem a child that wandering all day longUpon the sea-shore, gathers here a shell,And there a pebble, coloured by the wave,While the great ocean of truth, from sky to skyStretches before him, boundless, unexplored."
He has explored it now, and needs of meNeither defence nor tribute. His own workRemains his monument He rose at last so nearThe Power divine that none can nearer go;None in this age! To carry on his fireWe must await a mightier age to come.
Was it a dream?—that crowded concert-roomIn Bath; that sea of ruffles and laced coats;And William Herschel, in his powdered wig,Waiting upon the platform, to conductHis choir and Linley's orchestra? He stoodTapping his music-rest, lost in his own thoughtsAnd (did I hear or dream them?) all were mine:
My periwig's askew, my ruffle stainedWith grease from my new telescope!Ach, to-morrowHow Caroline will be vexed, although she growsAlmost as bad as I, who cannot leaveMy work-shop for one evening.I must giveOne last recital at St. Margaret's,And then—farewell to music.Who can leadTwo lives at once?Yet—it has taught me much,Thrown curious lights upon our world, to passFrom one life to another. Much that I tookFor substance turns to shadow. I shall seeNo throngs like this again; wring no more praiseOut of their hearts; forego that instant joy—Let those who have not known it count it vain—When human souls at once respond to yours.Here, on the brink of fortune and of fame,As men account these things, the moment comesWhen I must choose between them and the stars;And I have chosen.Handel, good old friend,We part to-night. Hereafter, I must watchThat other wand, to which the worlds keep time.
What has decided me? That marvelous nightWhen—ah, how difficult it will be to guide,With all these wonders whirling through my brain!—After a Pump-room concert I came homeHot-foot, out of the fluttering sea of fans,Coquelicot-ribboned belles and periwigged beaux,To my Newtonian telescope.The designWas his; but more than half the joy my own,Because it was the work of my own hand,A new one, with an eye six inches wide,Better than even the best that Newton made.Then, as I turned it on theGemini,And the deep stillness of those constant lights,Castor and Pollux, lucid pilot-stars,Began to calm the fever of my blood,I saw, O, first of all mankind I sawThe disk of my new planet gliding thereBeyond our tumults, in that realm of peace.
What will they christen it? Ach—notHerschel, no!NorGeorgium Sidus, as I once proposed;Although he scarce could lose it, as he lostThat world in 'seventy-six.Indeed, so farFrom trying to tax it, he has granted meHow much?—two hundred golden pounds a year,In the great name of science,—half the costOf one state-coach, with all those worlds to win!Well—well—we must be grateful. This mad kingHas done far more than all the worldly-wise,Who'll charge even this to madness.I believeOne day he'll have me pardoned for that…crime,When I escaped—deserted, some would say—From those drill-sergeants in my native land;Deserted drill for music, as I nowDesert my music for the orchestral spheres.No. This new planet is only new to man.His majesty has done much. Yet, as my friendDeclared last night, "Never did monarch buyHonour so cheaply"; and—he has not bought it.I think that it should bear some ancient name,And wear it like a crown; some deep, dark name,LikeUranus, known to remoter gods.
How strange it seems—this buzzing concert-room!There's Doctor Burney bowing and, behind him,His fox-eyed daughter Fanny.Is it a dream,These crowding midgets, dense as clustering beesIn some great bee-skep?Now, as I lift my wand,A silence grips them, and the strings begin,Throbbing. The faint lights flicker in gusts of sound.Before me, glimmering like a crescent moon,The dim half circle of the choir awaitsIts own appointed time.Beside me now,Watching my wand, plump and immaculateFrom buckled shoes to that white bunch of laceUnder his chin, the midget tenor rises,Music in hand, a linnet and a king.The bullfinch bass, that other emperor,Leans back indifferently, and clears his throatAs if to say, "This prelude leads toMe!"While, on their own proud thrones, on either hand,The sumptuously bosomed midget queens,Contralto and soprano, jealously eyeEach other's plumage.Round me the music throbsWith an immortal passion. I grow awareOf an appalling mystery…. We, this throngOf midgets, playing, listening, tense and still,Are sailing on a midget ball of dustWe call our planet; will have sailed through spaceTen thousand leagues before this music ends.What does it mean? Oh, God, whatcanit mean?—This weird hushed ant-hill with a thousand eyes;These midget periwigs; all those little blurs,Tier over tier, of faces, masks of flesh,Corruptible, hiding each its hopes and dreams,Its tragi-comic dreams.And all this throngWill be forgotten, mixed with dust, crushed out,Before this book of music is outwornOr that tall organ crumbles. ViolinsOutlast their players. Other hands may touchThat harpsichord; but ere this planet makesAnother threescore journeys round its sun,These breathing listeners will have vanished. Whither?I watch my moving hands, and they grow strange!What is it moves this body? What am I?How came I here, a ghost, to hear that voiceOf infinite compassion, far away,Above the throbbing strings, hark!Comfort ye…
If music lead us to a cry like this,I think I shall not lose it in the skies.I do but follow its own secret lawAs long ago I sought to understandIts golden mathematics; taught myselfThe way to lay one stone upon another,Before I dared to dream that I might buildMy Holy City of Song. I gave myselfTo all its branches. How they stared at me,Those men of "sensibility," when I saidThat algebra, conic sections, fluxions, allPertained to music. Let them stare again.Old Kepler knew, by instinct, what I nowDesire to learn. I have resolved to leaveNo tract of heaven unvisited.To-night—The music carries me back to it again!—I see beyond this island universe,Beyond our sun, and all those other sunsThat throng the Milky Way, far, far beyond,A thousand little wisps, faint nebulae,Luminous fans and milky streaks of fire;Some like soft brushes of electric mistStreaming from one bright point; others that spreadAnd branch, like growing systems; others discrete,Keen, ripe, with stars in clusters; others drawn backBy central forces into one dense death,Thence to be kindled into fire, reborn,And scattered abroad once more in a delicate sprayFaint as the mist by one bright dewdrop breathedAt dawn, and yet a universe like our own;Each wisp a universe, a vast galaxyWide as our night of stars.The Milky WayIn which our sun is drowned, to these would seemLess than to us their faintest drift of haze;Yet we, who are borne on one dark grain of dustAround one indistinguishable sparkOf star-mist, lost in one lost feather of light,Can by the strength of our own thought, ascendThrough universe after universe; trace their growthThrough boundless time, their glory, their decay;And, on the invisible road of law, more firmThan granite, range through all their length and breadth,Their height and depth, past, present and to come.So, those who follow the great Work-master's lawFrom small things up to great, may one day learnThe structure of the heavens, discern the wholeWithin the part, as men through Love see God.Oh, holy night, deep night of stars, whose peaceDescends upon the troubled mind like dew,Healing it with the sense of that pure reignOf constant law, enduring through all change;Shall I not, one day, after faithful years,Find that thy heavens are built on music, too,And hear, once more, above thy throbbing worldsThis voice of all compassion,Comfort ye,—Yes—comfort ye, my people, saith your God?
True type of all, from his own father's handHe caught the fire; and, though he carried it farInto new regions; and, from southern fieldsOf yellow lupin, added host on hostTo those bright armies which his father knew,Surely the crowning hour of all his lifeWas when, his task accomplished, he returnedA lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrineOf first beginnings and his father's youth.There, in the Octagon Chapel, with bared headGrey, honoured for his father and himself,He touched the glimmering keyboard, touched the booksThose dear lost hands had touched so long ago.
"Strange that these poor inanimate things outlastThe life that used them.Yes. I should like to tryThis good old friend of his. You'll leave me hereAn hour or so?"His hands explored the stops;And, while the music breathed what else were mute,His mind through many thoughts and memories ranged.Picture on picture passed before him thereIn living colours, painted on the gloom:Not what the world acclaimed, the great work crowned,But all that went before, the years of toil;The years of infinite patience, hope, despair.He saw the little house where all began,His father's first resolve to explore the sky,His first defeat, when telescopes were foundToo costly for a music-master's purse;And then that dogged and all-conquering willDeclaring, "Be it so. I'll make my own,A better than even the best that Newton made."He saw his first rude telescope—a tubeOf pasteboard, with a lens at either end;And then,—that arduous growth to size and powerWith each new instrument, as his knowledge grew;And, to reward each growth, a deeper heaven.He saw the good Aunt Caroline's dismayWhen her trim drawing-room, as by wizardry, turnedInto a workshop, where her brother's handsCut, ground and burnished, hour on aching hour,Month after month, new mirrors of the sky.
Yet, while from dawn to dark her brother movedAround some new-cut mirror, burnishing it,Knowing that if he once removed his handsThe surface would be dimmed and must foregoIts heaven for ever, her quiet hands would raiseFood to his lips; or, with that musical voiceWhich once—for she, too, offered her sacrifice—Had promised her fame, she whiled away the hoursReading how, long ago, Aladdin raisedThe djinns, by burnishing that old battered lamp;Or, from Cervantes, how one crazy soulTilting at windmills, challenged a purblind world.
He saw her seized at last by that same fire,Burning to help, a sleepless Vestal, doweredWith lightning-quickness, rushing from desk to clock,Or measuring distances at dead of nightBetween the lamp-micrometer and his eyes.
He saw her in mid-winter, hurrying out,A slim shawled figure through the drifted snow,To help him; saw her fall with a stifled cry,Gashing herself upon that buried hook,And struggling up, out of the blood-stained drift,To greet him with a smile."For any soldier,This wound," the surgeon muttered, "would have meantSix weeks in hospital."Not six days for her!"I am glad these nights were cloudy, and we lostSo little," was all she said.Sir John pulled outAnother stop. A little ironical marchOf flutes began to goose-step through the gloom.He saw that first "success"! Ay, call it so!The royal command,—the court desires to seeThe planet Saturn and his marvellous ringsOn Friday night. The skies, on Friday night,Were black with clouds. "Canute me no Canutes,"Muttered their new magician, and unpackedHis 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 Titan planet, every minute, rolledThree hundred leagues upon his awful way.Then, through that night, the _vox humana_spokeWith deeper longing than Lucretius knewWhen, in his great third book, the somber chantKindled 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, infiniteIn beauty, and in hope; the task bequeathedFrom dying hand to hand.Close to his graveLike amemento moristood the hulkOf 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 showedThe law that bound our planets binding stillThose coupled suns which year by year he watchedAround each other circling.Had our ownSome distant comrade, lost among the stars?Should we not, one day, just as Kepler drewHis planetary music and its lawsFrom all those faithful records Tycho made,Discern at last what vaster music rulesThe vaster drift of stars from deep to deep;Around what awful Poles, those wisps of lightThose fifteen hundred universes move?One signal, even now, across the dark,Declared their worlds confederate with our own;For, carrying many secrets, which we nowSlowly decipher, one swift messenger comesAcross the abyss…The light that, flashing through the immeasurable,From universe to universe proclaimsThe single reign of law that binds them all.We shall break up those rays and, in their linesAnd 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 Space or TimeShall halt or daunt them. Who that once has seenHow truth leads on to truth, shall ever dareTo 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 hearWith the soul's ear, far off, the unstricken chordsTo which, by its own inner law, it climbs,Would that my father knew how younger handsCompleted his own planetary tune;How from the planet that his own eyes foundThe mind of man would plunge into the dark,And, blindfold, find without the help of eyesA mightier planet, in the depths beyond."
Then, while the reeds, with quiet melodious paceFollowed the dream, as in a picture passed,Adams, the boy at Cambridge, making his vowBy that still lamp, alone in that deep night,Beneath the crumbling battlements of St. John's,To know why Uranus, uttermost planet known,Moved in a rhythm delicately astrayFrom all the golden harmonies ordainedBy those known measures of its sister-worlds.Was there an unknown planet, far beyond,Sailing through unimaginable deepsAnd drawing it from its path?Then challenging chordsEchoed 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 tremblingAlong the lines of our analysis nowAs once Columbus, from the shores of Spain,Felt the new continent.Then, in swift fugues, beganA race between two nations for the prizeOf that new world.Le Verrier in France,Adams in England, each of them unawareOf his own rival, at the selfsame hourResolved to find it.Not by the telescope now!Skies might be swept for aeons ere one sparkAmong those myriads were both found and seenTo move, at that vast distance round our sun.They worked by faith in law alone. They knewThe wanderings of great Uranus, and they knewThe 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 mass and placeOf 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 applaudOnly the flash and tinsel of their day,Never the quiet runners with the torch.Night after night they laboured. Line on lineOf intricate figures, moving all in law,They marshalled. Their long columns formed and marchedFrom battle to battle, and no sound was heardOf victory or defeat. They marched through snowsBleak as the drifts that broke Napoleon's prideAnd through a vaster desert. They drilled their hostsWith that divine precision of the mindTo which one second's error in a yearWere anarchy, that precision which is feltThrobbing through music.Month on month they toiled,With worlds for ciphers. One rich autumn nightBrooding over his figures there aloneIn Cambridge, Adams found them moving allTo one solution. To the unseeing eyeHis long neat pages had no more to tellThan any merchant's ledger, yet they shoneWith epic splendour, and like trumpets pealed;Three hundred million leagues beyond the pathOf our remotest planet, drowned in nightAnother and a mightier planet rolls;In volume, fifty times more vast than earth,And of so huge an orbit that its yearWellnigh outlasts our nations. Though it movesA thousand leagues an hour, it has not rangedThrice through its seasons since Columbus sailed,Or more than once since Galileo died.
He took his proofs to Greenwich. "Sweep the skiesWithin this limited region now," he said."You'll find your moving planet. I'm not moreThan one degree in error."He left his proofs;But Airy, king of Greenwich, looked askanceAt 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 GalleWho, being German, had his star-charts readyAnd, in that region, found one needlepointHad 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 prizeBecause 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 foundThe law that was a lantern to their feet,—Newton, the first whose thought could soar beyondThe bounds of human vision and declare,"Thus saith the law of Nature and of GodConcerning things invisible."This new worldWhat was it but one harmony the moreIn that great music which himself had heard,—The chant of those reintegrated spheresMoving around their sun, while all things movedAround one deeper Light, revealed by law,Beyond all vision, past all understanding.Yet darkly shadowed forth for dreaming menOn earth in music…Music, all comes backTo music in the end.Then, in the gloomOf the Octagon Chapel, the dreamer lifted upHis face, as if to all those great forebears.The quivering organ rolled upon the duskHis dream of that new symphony,—the sunChanting to all his planets on their wayWhile, stop to stop replying, height o'er height,His planets answered, voices of a dream:
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 meCan 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 measureA 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 passion,These children of my hurricanes of flame,Flung thro' the night, for midnight to refashion,Praise, and forget, the splendour whence they came.
_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 pinionsAspire 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:—_
A nearer sun, a rose of light arises,To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers,To paint my clouds with ever new surprisesAnd wreathe with mist my rosier domes and towers;
Where now, to praise their gods, a throng assemblesWhose hopes and dreams no sphere but mine has known.On other worlds the same warm sunlight trembles;But life, love, worship, these are mine alone.
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 storyAs darkness hides all colours from the blind?
I that am sailing deeper skies and dimmer,Twelve million leagues beyond the path of Mars,Salute the sun, that cloudy pearl, whose glimmerRenews 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 hearkenedTo sounds from earth. Five moons enchant my skies.
And deeper yet, like molten opal shiningMy belt of rainbow glory softly streams.And seven white moons around me intertwiningHide my vast beauty in a mist of dreams.
Huge is my orbit; and your flickering planetA 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.
And deeper yet—twelve million leagues of twilightDivide 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.
Plunge through immensity anew and find me.Though scarce I see your sun,—that dying spark—Across a myriad leagues it still can bind meTo 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?
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 turningSail, 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.
Once more upon the mountain's lonely heightI woke, and round me heard the sea-like soundOf pine-woods, as the solemn night-wind washedThrough the long canyons and precipitous gorgesWhere coyotes moaned and eagles made their nest.Once more, far, far below, I saw the lightsOf 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 moonGlimmered the new Uraniborg.Shadows passedLike monks, between it and the low grey wallsThat 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 seeHow, through his truth, that once dispelled a dream,Broke the false axle-trees of heaven, destroyedAll central certainty in the universe,And seemed to dwarf mankind, the spirit of manLaid 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 starsWithin the bound of our own galaxyLed Kepler to the music of his laws,So, father and son, the Herschels, with their chartsOf all those fire-mists, those faint nebulae,Those hosts of drifting universes, ledOur new discoverers to yet mightier lawsEnthroned above all worlds.We have not found them,And yet—only the intellectual foolDreams in his heart that even his brain can tickIn isolated measure, a centre of law,Amidst the whirl of universal chaos.For law descends from law. Though all the spheresThrough all the abysmal depths of Space were blownLike dust before a colder darker windThan 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 movesTo a lighter music, shatters its myriad worldsOnly to gather them up, as a shattered waveIs gathered again into a rhythmic sea,Whose ebb and flow are but the pulse of Life,In its creative passion.The records growUnceasingly, and each new grain of truthIs packed, like radium, with whole worlds of light.The eclipses timed in Babylon help us nowTo clock that gradual quickening of the moon,Ten seconds in a century.Who that wroteOn those clay tablets could foresee his giftTo future ages; dreamed that the groping mind,Dowered with so brief a life, could ever rangeWith that divine precision through the abyss?Who, when that good Dutch spectacle-maker setTwo lenses in a tube, to read the timeUpon the distant clock-tower of his church,Could dream of this, our hundred-inch, that showsThe snow upon the polar caps of MarsWhitening and darkening as the seasons change?Or who could dream when Galileo watchedHis moons of Jupiter, that from their eclipsesAnd from that change in their appointed times,Now late, now early, as the watching earthFarther or nearer on its orbit rolled,The immeasurable speed of light at lastShould be reduced to measure?Could Newton dreamWhen, through his prism, he broke the pure white shaftInto that rainbow band, how men should gatherAnd disentangle ray by delicate rayThe colours of the stars,—not only thoseThat 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 earthAlthough they died ten thousand years ago.Here, night by night, the innumerable heavensSpeak to an eye more sensitive than man's,Write on the camera's delicate retinaA thousand messages, lines of dark and brightThat speak of elements unknown on earth.How shall men doubt, who thus can read the BookOf Judgment, and transcend both Space and Time,Analyse worlds that long since passed away,And scan the future, how shall they doubt His powerFrom whom their power and all creation came?"
I think that, when the second Herschel triedThose great hexameters in our English tongue,A nobler shield than ever Achilles knewShone through the song and made hisechoes live:
"There he depicted the earth, and the canopied sky, and thesea-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 nobler shield for us, a deeper sky;But even to us who know how far awayThose constellations burn, the wonder bidesThat each vast sun can speed through the abyssAge after age more swiftly than an eagle,Each on its different road, alone like oursWith its own satellites; yet, since Homer sang,Their aspect has not altered! All their flightHas not yet changed the old pattern of the Wain.The sword-belt of Orion is not sundered.Nor has one fugitive splendour broken yetFrom Cassiopeia's throne.A thousand yearsAre but as yesterday, even unto these.How shall men doubt His empery over timeWhose dwelling is a deep so absoluteThat we can only find Him in our souls.For there, despite Copernicus, each may findThe 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.