II.
I wonder sometimes if the star-illusions
We see at first glance in the infinite sky,
Are not the suggestions, the far-intrusions,
Of systems on systems beyond the eye.
I wonder if ever the thought may confound them
Who inhabit a silvery orb of mist,
Seeing myriads of silvery others around them,
That myriads on myriads more may exist.
Oh say, do the sprites of each tiny frost-crystal
That burns with the pent-up fire of suns
Ever dream or imagine the same holy vestal
Is burning in myriads of similar ones?
Do the spirits that dwell in the dust of a sun-beam,
As each in its course like a planet whirls,
Ever know they are bathed in the light of but one beam
From the sun of but one mighty system of worlds?
III.
Oh the narrowness man has been born to descry in,
And the infinite bounds of his hopes and desires!
Even unto the night of the day he shall die in
Aspiring and falling he still aspires.
But I know in my heart that in worlds elysian
The convex surface of every eye,
With a perfected soul and an infinite vision,
Will range o’er a perfected, infinite sky.
IV.
For I dreamed a dream, in the midnight quiet,
Of a golden day in a happy time;
And my thoughts leaped up at the dream-god’s fiat
And sang in my heart this golden chime:—
O rise thou my soul, look beyond thy dark prison,
The warder is shifting the mortal bars;
An infinite sun in the east has arisen,
There’s an infinite system beyond the stars.