Watchers of the Sky | Page 4

truth before he, too, went down,?Whelmed in the cloudy wreckage of that dream.
So one by one we looked, the men who served?Urania, and the men from Vulcan's forge.?A beautiful eagerness in the darkness lit?The swarthy faces that too long had missed?A meaning in the dull mechanic maze?Of labour on this blind earth, but found it now.?Though only a moment's wandering melody?Hopelessly far above, it gave their toil?Its only consecration and its joy.?There, with dark-smouldering eyes and naked throats,?Blue-dungareed, red-shirted, grimed and smeared?With engine-grease and sweat, they gathered round?The foot of that dim ladder; each muttering low?As he came down, his wonder at what he saw?To those who waited,--a picture for the brush?Of Rembrandt, lighted only by the rift?Above them, where the giant muzzle thrust?Out through the dim arched roof, and slowly throbbed,?Against the slowly moving wheel of the earth,?Holding their chosen star.
There, like an elf,?Perched on the side of that dark slanting tower?The Italian mechanician watched the moons,?That Italy discovered.
One by one,?American, English, French, and Dutch, they climbed?To see the wonder that their own blind hands?Had helped to achieve.
At midnight while they paused?To adjust the clock-machine, I wandered out?Alone, into the silence of the night.?The silence? On that lonely height I heard?Eternal voices;?For, as I looked into the gulf beneath,?Whence almost all the lights had vanished now,?The whole dark mountain seemed to have lost its earth?And to be sailing like a ship through heaven.?All round it surged the mighty sea-like sound?Of soughing pine-woods, one vast ebb and flow?Of absolute peace, aloof from all earth's pain,?So calm, so quiet, it seemed the cradle-song,?The deep soft breathing of the universe?Over its youngest child, the soul of man.?And, as I listened, that Aeolian voice?Became an invocation and a prayer:?O you, that on your loftier mountain dwell?And move like light in light among the thoughts?Of heaven, translating our mortality?Into immortal song, is there not one?Among you that can turn to music now?This long dark fight for truth? Not one to touch?With beauty this long battle for the light,?This little victory of the spirit of man?Doomed to defeat--for what was all we saw?To that which neither eyes nor soul could see?--?Doomed to defeat and yet unconquerable,?Climbing its nine miles nearer to the stars.?Wars we have sung. The blind, blood-boltered kings?Move with an epic music to their thrones.?Have you no song, then, of that nobler war??Of those who strove for light, but could not dream?Even of this victory that they helped to win,?Silent discoverers, lonely pioneers,?Prisoners and exiles, martyrs of the truth?Who handed on the fire, from age to age;?Of those who, step by step, drove back the night?And struggled, year on year, for one more glimpse?Among the stars, of sovran law, their guide;?Of those who searching inward, saw the rocks?Dissolving into a new abyss, and saw?Those planetary systems far within,?Atoms, electrons, whirling on their way?To build and to unbuild our solid world;?Of those who conquered, inch by difficult inch,?The freedom of this realm of law for man;?Dreamers of dreams, the builders of our hope,?The healers and the binders up of wounds,?Who, while the dynasts drenched the world with blood,?Would in the still small circle of a lamp?Wrestle with death like Heracles of old?To save one stricken child.
Is there no song?To touch this moving universe of law?With ultimate light, the glimmer of that great dawn?Which over our ruined altars yet shall break?In purer splendour, and restore mankind?From darker dreams than even Lucretius knew?To vision of that one Power which guides the world.?How should men find it? Only through those doors?Which, opening inward, in each separate soul?Give each man access to that Soul of all?Living within each life, not to be found?Or known, till, looking inward, each alone?Meets the unknowable and eternal God.
And there was one that moved like light in light?Before me there,--Love, human and divine,?That can exalt all weakness into power,--?Whispering, Take this deathless torch of song...?Whispering, but with such faith, that even I?Was humbled into thinking this might be?Through love, though all the wisdom of the world?Account it folly.
Let my breast be bared?To every shaft, then, so that Love be still?My one celestial guide the while I sing?Of those who caught the pure Promethean fire?One from another, each crying as he went down?To one that waited, crowned with youth and joy,--?_Take thou the splendour, carry it out of sight?Into the great new age I must not know,?Into the great new realm I must not tread_.
I
COPERNICUS
The neighbours gossiped idly at the door.?Copernicus lay dying overhead.?His little throng of friends, with startled eyes,?Whispered together, in that dark house of dreams,?From which by one dim crevice in the wall?He used to watch the stars.
"His book has come?From Nuremberg at last; but who would dare?To let him see it now?"--
"They have altered it!?Though Rome approved in full, this preface, look,?Declares that his discoveries are a dream!"--?"He has asked