Ha! we move on apace,
Swifter than the lightning in a weird, wild race
Toward Jupiter, passing by the lone asteroids,
Whose phosphorescent lights but glimmer in the voids.
Hail, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta! known afar
By the vivid light, the glittering, brilliant star.
Like oases in the desert, to rest the tired eye,
To refresh the famishing, wearily passing by;
Like harbors by the ocean, or isles far away,
The mariner’s haven when skies with rack are gray;
So ye, too, have your mission ever to disperse
A portion of the darkness shrouding the universe.
But we flit by the planetoids
And observe a deep’ning glow of translucent light
Pouring along the aisles of space, intensely bright,
Heralding the approach of an orb stupendous,
Of which the luminous shadow is tremendous!
CHAPTER XII.—JUPITER.
Jupiter is before us! Stay, O Time, thy hand,
That we may gaze on an orb superlatively grand!
And we are rapt in astonishment and amaze
At a form so colossal, wrapped in an outward blaze
Of resplendent glory, whose illuminating stress
Penetrates the verges of the known universe.
Hail, Jupiter! of the solar orbs the greatest,
And thou art, perhaps, the grandest and the noblest.
In thy orbit three thousand million miles or more,
By the confines of Saturn’s strange, luminous shore;
Or looking on the unfathomable unknown,
Peering into the nebulæ of systems strewn
In the eternal mystery of solitudes
Unspeakable, where scarce even thought intrudes.
But thou art a glorious sight when thy brilliant moons
Light thy radiant face in the night’s resplendent noons!
And surely untold millions roam thy mighty plains,
Where existence and progression ever reigns
In peace perpetual, and friendship as true as gold—
A higher life and purer, of love and joy untold.
But thou’rt a mystery still, beyond our eager gaze,
Shadowed by clouds, or belts, and red and purple haze.
We believe man ne’er shall see but the outer line
Of worlds only known to celestial sight divine.
CHAPTER XIII.—SATURN.
Awake, Time!
If ever thou sleepest. Draw out thy car once more,
And cleave the outer realms of space, beyond the shore
Of noble Jupiter. Out fearlessly! away!
Trusting a power that sleepeth not night nor day.
Now receding from the greatest, let’s seek the strangest
Of the planets on a line remote, where rangest
In untold splendor in an orbit round the sun
Of amazing distance, luminous, stately Saturn.
But we tremble, and we shrink with an awesome dread,
At the yawning distance underneath and o’erhead!
Right and left forever the soul may madly soar,
Seeking for a limit till lost for evermore!
Look up! look up! weak and unhappy doubting soul;
Let the promises of heaven thy acts control;
Then calmly away, where ’tis neither night nor day,
Over the tremulous seas, by the spectral ray
Of stars and systems scintillating down the voids;
Back o’er the desolate sea of the asteroids,
Floating outward still, and with mind grown more serene,
Though poised o’er a yawning chasm lying between
Jupiter and Saturn, five hundred million miles! a span
To chill the bravest, and the fearless to unman.
But we win our weird way, and intercept again
A peerless planet, with eight attendants in train.
Noble, mysterious Saturn!
We have no sight to penetrate thy outward glory—
None but the Infinite may tell thy story.
We may know thee when the soul casts off its clog of clay
And sees with spirit eyes when the mist clears away.