Classic Poem

I WISH my father had the story known —
Its interest his sermon would have nerved —
How the cathedral lamp was ever blown
That Galileo with his pulse observed,
And as it swung, he counted his heart's beating,
And planned a miracle in that dull meeting.

Imagination came to me, I wot,
In those old churches by the piney forest,
But mathematics was not in my thought,
Not measure in the bawling Christian chorist;
Romance, that is theology again,
I drank in church and useless am to men.

O, had the dogma with some wise restrainting
Child-fancy forced on grooves exact to swerve,
As old Mahomet did forbid them painting
And made them draw the cosine and the curve,
In algebraic strength I had projected
More than Aladdin's lamp ways did traverse,
And into heaven passed the God-elected
Among the sure feet of astronomers.

The Popes who Copernik were negativing
And Galileo silenced but not sieved,
Were not as ignorant as preachers living
Who know not Copernik has ever lived,
But follow heathens in their horrid fearing
Of horned Gods like Babylonian kings,
While Learning bends the heavens with persevering.
And parting symbols, finds eternal Things, —
Finds not our human semblance domineering,
But motion as susceptible as strong,
Worlds without end exquisitely insphering
And praise intuning, tenderer than song.

For us, the heirs of countless predecessors,
By Time unanxious to our boyhood brought,
We do not enter Nature as transgressors,
But on our hand the signet ring of Thought;
Death is our mellowing; facts kill its terrors:
Both Birth and Death like noble brethren go.
The sum of our exaggerated errors
Is that we romanced, and we did not know.