Watchers of the Sky | Page 4

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
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,