| |
| HAIL beauteous and inconstant!—Thou who roll’st | |
| Thy silver car around the realm of night, | |
| Queen of soft hours! how fanciful art thou | |
| In equipage and vesture.—Now thou com’st | |
| With slender horn piercing the western cloud, | 5 |
| As erst on Judah’s hills, when joyous throngs | |
| With trump and festival saluted thee; | |
| Anon thy waxing crescent ’mid the host | |
| Of constellations, like some fairy boat, | |
| Glides o’er the waveless sea; then as a bride | 10 |
| Thou bow’st thy cheek behind a fleecy veil, | |
| Timid and fair; or, bright in regal robes, | |
| Dost bid thy full orb’d chariot proudly roll, | |
| Sweeping with silent rein the starry path | |
| Up to the highest node,—then plunging low | 15 |
| To seek dim Nadir in his misty cell.— | |
| —Lov’st thou our earth, that thou dost hold thy lamp | |
| To guide and cheer her, when the wearied sun | |
| Forsakes her?—Sometimes, roving on, thou shedd’st | |
| The eclipsing blot ungrateful, on that sire | 20 |
| Who feeds thy urn with light,—but sinking deep | |
| ’Neath the dark shadow of the earth dost mourn | |
| And find thy retribution. | |
| —Dost thou hold | |
| Dalliance with ocean, that his mighty heart | 25 |
| Tosses at thine approach, and his mad tides, | |
| Drinking thy favoring glance, more rudely lash | |
| Their rocky bulwark?—Do thy children trace | |
| Through crystal tube our coarser-featured orb | |
| Even as we gaze on thee?—With Euclid’s art | 30 |
| Perchance, from pole to pole, her sphere they span, | |
| Her sun-loved tropics—and her spreading seas | |
| Rich with their myriad isles. Perchance they mark | |
| Where India’s cliffs the trembling cloud invade, | |
| Or Andes with his fiery banner flouts | 35 |
| The empyrean,—where old Atlas towers,— | |
| Or that rough chain whence he of Carthage pour’d | |
| Terrors on Rome.—Thou, too, perchance, hast nursed | |
| Some bold Copernicus, or fondly call’d | |
| A Galileo forth, those sun-like souls | 40 |
| Which shone in darkness, though our darkness fail’d | |
| To comprehend them.—Canst thou boast, like earth, | |
| A Kepler, skilful pioneer and wise?— | |
| A sage to write his name among the stars | |
| Like glorious Herschel?—or a dynasty | 45 |
| Like great Cassini’s, which from sire to son | |
| Transmitted science as a birthright seal’d? | |
| —Rose there some lunar Horrox,—to whose glance | |
| Resplendent Venus her adventurous course | |
| Reveal’d, even in his boyhood?—some La Place | 50 |
| Luminous as the skies he sought to read?— | |
| Thou deign’st no answer,—or I fain would ask | |
| If since thy bright creation, thou hast seen | |
| Ought like a Newton, whose admitted eye | |
| The arcana of the universe explored? | 55 |
| Light’s subtle ray its mechanism disclosed, | |
| The impetuous comet his mysterious lore | |
| Unfolded,—system after system rose, | |
| Eternal wheeling through the immense of space, | |
| And taught him of their laws.—Even angels stood | 60 |
| Amazed, as when in ancient times they saw | |
| On Sinai’s top, a mortal walk with God.— | |
| —But he to whom the secrets of the skies | |
| Were whisper’d—in humility adored, | |
| Breathing with childlike reverence the prayer, | 65 |
| —“When on yon heavens, with all their orbs, I gaze, | |
| Jehovah!—what is man?” | |
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