Classic Poem

CXI.

When his boat on Locarno scarce heaved in the calm,
Things around him were clothed not in more homely charm,
Than the gulfs where gaunt systems in awful embrace
Put forth arms made of worlds, like huge feelers, in space.

CXII.

The universe taught him that space was less vast
Than the world of his soul, which all time will outlast;
And mind, more colossal than matter, can come
In the world of Orion to be straitened for room.

CXIII.

What hope for the future, he thought, when he saw
Orbs condense and compress themselves, plainly by law,
Worlds by millions slow gathering in dread concentration,
To some marvellous oneness of undreamed creation!

CXIV.

He watched giant systems break up and re-form,
Like nations renewed by a popular storm:
It was fearful to see how they cracked, swang asunder,
And closed up in new systems of order and wonder.

CXV.

He beheld with glad terror our own Milky Way
At its north and south poles self-unrivet, out-sway,
And some world-groups heave anchor, like icebergs sublime,
Thawed out in the lapse of unwriteable time.

CXVI.

So the Clouds of Magellan drifted off and dipped down
Towards earth, as a cloud settles over a town,
Mighty realms of white worlds, their soft tremulous shining
With the sunsets of earth most fraternally twining.

CXVII.

All is change and advance, not a cyclical race;
Love only survives wrecks of Time, Force, and Space;
Love only shall see out of all revolution
How creation shall perfect its grand constitution.

CXVIII.

All around us is Home: the heart owns no Abroad
In the lap of this beautiful Free Act of God;
His Love is the instinct that pilots its Course,
And His sweet Will its true Imperceptible Force.

CXIX.

O how his heart grew with the largeness of things!
His sights were all thoughts, and his thoughts were all wings:
Yet one look of love from his sister were bliss
More eternal, more infinite surely than this.

CXX.

Then went he, and stood in the face of the sun,
At the end of the race which that orb has to run,
An invisible goal in ethereal seas,
Which lies to the north of the bright Hercules.