Watchers of the Sky | Page 3

working life,?Before they made those solid tons of glass,?Their hundred-inch reflector, the clear pool,?The polished flawless pool that it must be?To hold the perfect image of a star.?And, even now, some secret flaw--none knew?Until to-morrow's test--might waste it all.?Where was the gambler that would stake so much,--?Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw??The cost of it,--they'd not find that again,?Either in gold or life-stuff! All their youth?Was fuel to the flame of this one work.?Once in a lifetime to the man of science,?Despite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,?There comes this drama.
If he fails, he fails?Utterly. He at least will have no time?For fresh beginnings. Other men, no doubt,?Years hence, will use the footholes that he cut?In those precipitous cliffs, and reach the height,?But he will never see it."
So for me,?The light words of that letter seemed to hide?The passion of a lifetime, and I shared?The crowning moment of its hope and fear.?Next day, through whispering aisles of palm we rode?Up to the foot-hills, dreaming desert-hills?That to assuage their own delicious drought?Had set each tawny sun-kissed slope ablaze?With peach and orange orchards.
Up and up,?Along the thin white trail that wound and climbed?And zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage,?The car went crawling, till the shining plain?Below it, like an airman's map, unrolled.?Houses and orchards dwindled to white specks?In midget cubes and squares of tufted green.?Once, as we rounded one steep curve, that made?The head swim at the canyoned gulf below,?We saw through thirty miles of lucid air?Elvishly small, sharp as a crumpled petal?Blown from the stem, a yard away, a sail?Lazily drifting on the warm blue sea.?Up for nine miles along that spiral trail?Slowly we wound to reach the lucid height?Above the clouds, where that white dome of shell,?No wren's now, but an eagle's, took the flush?Of dying day. The sage-brush all died out,?And all the southern growths, and round us now,?Firs of the north, and strong, storm-rooted pines?Exhaled a keener fragrance; till, at last,?Reversing all the laws of lesser hills,?They towered like giants round us. Darkness fell?Before we reached the mountain's naked height.
Over us, like some great cathedral dome,?The observatory loomed against the sky;?And the dark mountain with its headlong gulfs?Had lost all memory of the world below;?For all those cloudless throngs of glittering stars?And all those glimmerings where the abyss of space?Is powdered with a milky dust, each grain?A burning sun, and every sun the lord?Of its own darkling planets,--all those lights?Met, in a darker deep, the lights of earth,?Lights on the sea, lights of invisible towns,?Trembling and indistinguishable from stars,?In those black gulfs around the mountain's feet.?Then, into the glimmering dome, with bated breath,?We entered, and, above us, in the gloom?Saw that majestic weapon of the light?Uptowering like the shaft of some huge gun?Through one arched rift of sky.
Dark at its base?With naked arms, the crew that all day long?Had sweated to make ready for this night?Waited their captain's word.
The switchboard shone?With elfin lamps of white and red, and keys?Whence, at a finger's touch, that monstrous tube?Moved like a creature dowered with life and will,?To peer from deep to deep.
Below it pulsed?The clock-machine that slowly, throb by throb,?Timed to the pace of the revolving earth,?Drove the titanic muzzle on and on,?Fixed to the chosen star that else would glide?Out of its field of vision.
So, set free?Balanced against the wheel of time, it swung,?Or rested, while, to find new realms of sky?The dome that housed it, like a moon revolved,?So smoothly that the watchers hardly knew?They moved within; till, through the glimmering doors,?They saw the dark procession of the pines?Like Indian warriors, quietly stealing by.
Then, at a word, the mighty weapon dipped?Its muzzle and aimed at one small point of light?One seeming insignificant star.
The chief,?Mounting the ladder, while we held our breath,?Looked through the eye-piece.
Then we heard him laugh?His thanks to God, and hide it in a jest.?"A prominence on Jupiter!"--
They laughed,?"What do you mean?"--"It's moving," cried the chief,?They laughed again, and watched his glimmering face?High overhead against that moving tower.?"Come up and see, then!"
One by one they went,?And, though each laughed as he returned to earth,?Their souls were in their eyes.
Then I, too, looked,?And saw that insignificant spark of light?Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn,?A swimming world, a perfect rounded pearl,?Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed,?I saw a miracle,--right on its upmost edge?A tiny mound of white that slowly rose,?Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear?And swam in heaven above its parent world?To greet its three bright sister-moons.
A moon,?Of Jupiter, no more, but clearer far?Than mortal eyes had seen before from earth,?O, beautiful and clear beyond all dreams?Was that one silver phrase of the starry tune?Which Galileo's "old discoverer" first?Dimly revealed, dissolving into clouds?The imagined fabric of our universe.?_"Jupiter stands in heaven and will stand?Though all the sycophants bark at him,"_ he cried,?Hailing the