CHAPTER X.—THE FLIGHT THROUGH SPACE.
Insatiable Time!
I grow weary in a vain attempt to follow thee,
Or tell the past, so full of deepest mystery;
I cannot cope with thee, for thou art everywhere,
And knowest well that I am weak with a despair
Of ever telling of thy wondrous flight
Through the vast realms of space, by the glorious light
Of day, and the weird, lonesome silence of the night,
Or through awful voids of space, dead to human sight.
None but the Maker can measure the flight of time;
Thou art man’s Nemesis, from a power divine.
But in thought I’ll flit with thee through realms of space,
And by the silvery moonlight we may dimly trace
Our way in passage to the dazzling god of day.
I’m blinded by its fierce and glittering ray,
For we are drawing nigh, like lightning through the sky,
So swift is finite thought to mount, to soar, to fly.
Now in affright, and awesome dread falls on our soul—
How its vast fiery billows leap, and mount, and roll
Over the awful desolation of its deeps,
Where a whirlwind of sulphurous flame forever sweeps
In seething eddies over its frenzied plains.
What maintains the equilibrium of its loss and gains—
Immeasurable yawning gulfs that glow and glare?
Are Satan and his dreadful realm abiding there?
And was it here the fallen angels found their hell?
See! see! the molten tides that sink, and rise, and swell,
And the volcanic bursts that leap frightfully away,
Lighting up the far phantom voids intense as day.
O Time! let’s flee away from this maddening sight,
And by more mildly lighted planets take our flight.
Gliding swift onward over soundless, unknown seas,
What stupendous voids the mind in its terror sees!
O shoreless, frightful, endless, vast infinitude!
And by dread amaze unspeakable pursued;
We flit by the way where ’tis neither night nor day,
Amid a deep eternal silence; and I pray
For strength of soul my appalled senses to retain,
A calm the phantom seas may beat upon in vain.
Save us from the calamity of a mind o’erthrown,
Sunk in shoreless darkness with light and reason gone.
Oh, what glory bursts to our view on every side
As we through glowing rosy spaces swiftly glide,
And see the grandeur of a million burning stars
All bejewelled and bedight with golden bars!
In orbits so vast they swing in ellipses round
A grand centre, a controlling power profound.
From the gleaming and glowing centre of the day
Let us glide across the far paths the planets stray.
Hail, Mercury!
All hail! thou “swift winged messenger of the gods,”
Nearest the mighty central heart that burns and throbs;
Holding thee nearest, perhaps the best and dearest,
Obedient to the will thou lovest and fearest.
And so swift thou rollest along these liquid seas,
The poor finite mind amazed but dimly sees
The splendor of thy far panoramic glory,
And failest in an attempt to tell thy story.
Beautiful Venus!
Time and I are drifting by thy luminous shores,
Lost in admiration as the soul in rapture soars
Around the intense splendor of thy outward form.
Surely the great Creator sought but to adorn
Thee in a halo of radiance; a golden sheen
Veils thy beauty, of which we mortals may but dream.
Ah! to penetrate the veil and look upon thy face,
Which surely is benignant with a warmth and grace
Of which we terrestrials have never dreamed nor known—
We of an orb more chilling, of a sterner zone.
And perhaps, Venus, thou hast a more happy clime,
Continents more generous, scenery more divine,
And seas that are more sunny, sweet winds ever bland,
And purer streams and rivers purling through the land;
And thy lovely valleys and undulating hills
Are glad with a grander nature, a life that thrills
To the rich, fair fulness, profuse on every side,
Where being is a blessing, full, and deep, and wide.
Do thy flora and thy fauna ever fade away?
Are thy seasons e’er balmy as a summer day?
Does the sternness of the winter ne’er come to thee?
And from death and sin art thou absolutely free?
Does love and friendship through thy years live on the same?
Man’s most needed blessing, a never dying flame.
Farewell, Venus! we are sweeping fast from thy sight.
Radiant orb, farewell! We resume our outward flight
Across the yawning chasms of eternal gloom,
In which dead worlds, perhaps, have found an unknown tomb.