I think that, when the second Herschel tried
Those great hexameters in our English tongue,
A nobler shield than ever Achilles knew
Shone through the song and made his
echoes live:
"There he depicted the earth, and the canopied sky, and the
sea-waves,
There the unwearied sun, and the full-orbed moon in their courses,
All the configured stars that gem the circuit of heaven,
Pleiads and Hyads were there and the giant force of Orion,
There the revolving Bear, which the Wain they call, was ensculptured,
Circling on high, and in all his courses regarding Orion,
Sole of the starry train that descends not to bathe in the ocean!"
A nobler shield for us, a deeper sky;
But even to us who know how far away
Those constellations burn, the wonder bides
That each vast sun can speed through the abyss
Age after age more swiftly than an eagle,
Each on its different road, alone like ours
With its own satellites; yet, since Homer sang,
Their aspect has not altered! All their flight
Has not yet changed the old pattern of the Wain.
The sword-belt of Orion is not sundered.
Nor has one fugitive splendour broken yet
From Cassiopeia's throne.
A thousand years
Are but as yesterday, even unto these.
How shall men doubt His empery over time
Whose dwelling is a deep so absolute
That we can only find Him in our souls.
For there, despite Copernicus, each may find
The centre of all things. There He lives and reigns.
There infinite distance into nearness grows,
And infinite majesty stoops to dust again;
All things in little, infinite love in man . . .
Oh, beating wings, descend to earth once more,
And hear, reborn, the desert singer's cry:
When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The sun and the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained,
Though man be as dust I know Thou art mindful of him;
And, through Thy law, Thy light still visiteth him.