CHAPTER XI.—MARS.
Across a lessening void we mark a red glare
Rising fierce above us, menacing everywhere;
And we approach with fear and trembling, and the stars
Grow dim, as bursts on us the wrathful face of Mars.
Hail to thee, stern “god of war”!
Terrestrials have looked to thee through distance afar.
Down the centuries thou wast held in dread and fear
Through the predictions of astrologer and seer.
Holding a strong influence o’er the life of man,
The oracles communed with thee when war began.
But their predictions are found wanting, and a time
Of profound investigation and thought almost divine
Is dispelling the curse of ignorance. And the mind,
Once groping in grossest darkness and sorely blind
To truth, is emerging into the marvellous light
Of day, and preceded by superstitious night.
And we hail thee, Mars! we greet thy great glowing face
With wonder and delight, and by its glory trace
Thy continents and seas—so like, so like our own—
Thy towering mountains and atmospheric zone.
Thy undulating hills and valleys seem so fair,
Say, is thy clime more genial? Is life a blessing there?
Thou hast thy clouds and sunshine, thy vapor, mist, and
rain,
And seasons so like ours, that come and go again.
The sweep of storm and tempest, seas that rage and roar—
Are there ships upon thy oceans that come no more?
Are there hearts in waiting crushed by weary pain,
Grown hopeless in the cruel watching all in vain?
Or hast thou a higher strata, man a happier state,
Free from danger and the uncertainty of fate?
A life of love and plenty, and heaven very near,
Intense in soul, and perfect, devoid of all fear?
Does slavery and wrong never come unto thee?
Is man to man there equal, and absolutely free?
And do they live on there, nevermore growing old,
Exempt from decay and death, and the grave so cold,
Where merely a blest transition to man is given
Through thy gates to the immaculate courts of heaven?
Companion Time! can we not nearer, nearer glide,
To get a view more definite of Mars in all his pride?
To view those seas and oceans breaking on their shores,
And hear the thunder of the billow as it roars?
To hear the winds murmur in the lovely bowers,
Caressing the hills and woodlands, rife with flowers?
To hear the strange, sweet songsters carol light and gay,
And watch the glad coming and going of the day?
To trace the streams and rivers, and hills that die away
In blue ethereal distance, where the mountains lay
Cloud-capped in shadow, or in dazzling light,
And the dreamy splendor of the moons of Mars by night?
To look on a race perhaps superior to our own,
A type of our first created, ere man was o’erthrown
By sin—a calamity, the direful deed of Eve,
For which our benighted world hath ne’er ceased to grieve?
Tumultuous thoughts and strange, beyond our weak control,
Flood o’er the startled mind and agitate the soul,
As, gliding by Mars’ shores on our tour outward bound,
Assured by thoughts prophetic, almost profound,
That a nobler race of beings abideth there,
More blest, perhaps, and sinless—a world supremely fair.
Farewell, thou glowing orb! it may be ne’er again
To look upon thy face in pleasure or in pain;
And we bid thee now adieu, and sever thus the spell
Upon us cast by thee; forever, Mars, farewell!
And that saddest of all words floated out, away,
Down the weird and shadowy silence dim and gray;
Up from eternal distance echo repeated, Farewell!
Shudderingly receding in an appalling knell,
Still muttering in hollow phantom tones, Farewell!
From the outer verges of the universe, Farewell!
And vague doubt and terror seizes on us once more
As we dare the frightful chasms, hovering o’er
Abysses, hiding secrets only God may know,
So vast, so deep and shadowy are the seas that flow
Between Mars and Jupiter. But let’s bear away
And calmly move along where unknown dangers lay.