Classic Poem

CI.

He went, horror hushing the songs in his mouth,
To that drear restless universe down in the south,
And he trembled to see reeling Argus so flicker,
Like a torch as we wave it, now slower, now quicker.

CII.

He had favorite tracks out in space where he toured,
And, from old childish longings, he deftly explored
Those dark mottled patches, once scorned as delusion,
Molten light, molten darkness, in orderly fusion.

CIII.

Creation, so deemed he, was scarcely begun,
A grandeur in childhood, a race yet to run,
A hymn that this moment through new space has rung,
The first strophe of which has yet scarcely been sung.

CIV.

He saw rings part from centres in flaming projection,
Worlds weltering wildly towards their perfection,
Where the work that was done appeared more like undoing,
Contraction, explosion, dark deluge, and ruin.

CV.

He met rays of light falling earthward, like tears,
That had been on their travels thirty millions of years,
Cleaving like lightning the thin purple gloom,
Yet would hardly reach earth until after the Doom.

CVI.

What is distance but nature's best poem, that sings
As it lengthens its flight, throwing off from its wings
The most magical softness, which veils and discloses,
Bringing out, filling up, wheresoe'er it reposes.

CVII.

It is distance which robes far and near with their tints,
Excites by concealing, and heightens by hints,
On earth blends green forests and indigo mountains,
And above presses star-worlds to single light-fountains.

CVIII.

His home was the poet's home, space, and beyond,
All the worlds knit in one world, with thought for a bond,
Strong musical thought to repel and to draw,
With metre for ether, and song for a law.

CIX.

For his thoughts peopled space, or at times drew it in
To itself, making all things its kith and its kin;
The bleakest of nebulas gave him as much
Of a home as the lake which the alp-shadows touch.

CX.

He was not more at home, where his own Lombard sky
Looks down through the chestnuts, than when he might lie
On forlorn wisps of stars that with pendulous motion
Writhe about over space, like the wrecks on the ocean.