By persistence we’re nearing thee, and pierce the light
Of thy mighty outward glowing rings, and the sight,
Together with thy brilliant coterie of moons by night,
Puts the rivalry of sister planets all to flight.
What a sphere of luminous glory circles thee,
Floating ever in a tremulous crystal sea!
And were more loving hands extended unto thee
At creation’s dawn? In illumined beauty free
And perfect, subject to gloom and shadow never?
Happy thought! “A thing of beauty, a joy forever.”
Who could gaze unmoved upon thy lovely face
And not desire grander powers to minutely trace
Thy inner life, which surely is noble and good?
Peerless, mysterious orb! of a sisterhood
Of grand planets, for thee our song shall ever swell.
Peerless, mysterious orb! farewell! farewell!
CHAPTER XIV.—URANUS.
Get our bearings, Time!
Ballast well, and trim thy wondrous aerial car
For another dread abyss, lying there afar
Outward, bordering Uranus’s remote, lonely shore—
A shore of frightful silence, brooding ever o’er
Appalling solitudes, o’er which e’en God may weep!
And as we launch away vague horrors o’er us creep;
But like many a threat’ning danger bravely faced,
The soul is calmed if it by right be braced.
And thus we reason as we dare the dismal deeps,
And a sense of kindest protection o’er us creeps.
And thus we win our way unerringly again,
And these tragic recesses yawn at us in vain;
And out from the dim, weird spaces, with stately tread,
Moving in majestic order, with uplifted head,
Appears stately Uranus!
We salute thee on our far journey outward bound,
And invade thy orbit—an elliptic way profound;
But though thy great moons in all thy pride are beaming,
And the tremulous stars in vague distance dreaming,
We can but view thee vaguely—thy shades sternly hide
Thy cold, averted face, and mien of lofty pride.
Perhaps a race more haughty, more selfish than our own,
In arrogated power is fixed on this far zone.
Strange that the system’s otherwise immutable laws
Revolve thy moons from east to west—wherefore the cause?
Has some fierce convulsion disturbed thy outward form,
O’erturning thy satellites in a planetary storm?
Because thou art so remote we do not know thee well,
And untold millions may on thy surface dwell.
We leave thee in thy vast area of solitude,
Never again on thy presence to intrude.
And the deep, shoreless, interminable ocean
Of gloom closes round thy evanishing motion!
And I shrink on the verge of an appalling sea
Of chaotic abysses and wastes before me!
But it passes away
As for strength and deliverance we fervently pray;
And faith and full trust have returned unto me
On the verge of that dreary and desolate sea.
Look not beneath us; look up! aye, up and away!
And let not these weird terrors affright or dismay.
Like a meteor we glide in the sure car of Time,
Peering after the secrets that still are divine.
CHAPTER XV.—NEPTUNE.
Now we seek a lone station far outward, alone,
On the confines bordering on the vast unknown;
An elliptical way of an orb that’s sublime—
The sentinel of our system, on the outward line.
Like a flash from the sun we are piercing our way,
But the light from the stars flickers out in the gray
Desolation of oceans eternally stilled,
Like the seas at the poles by Arctic night chilled.
And phantasmagoria bewilderingly plays
Through the weird, sunless glens and the pale chilly haze,
Where spectres derisively grin through the gloom,
Beckoning us downward as to a dread doom!
But the victory is ours—before us they flee—
And we rise from the gloom of that desolate sea;
And the light from the vast orb we seek meets our gaze,
Translucently illumined by a pale, cold blaze;
And it flares up before us with one pallid moon—
A stern, lonely wanderer—majestic Neptune!
Strange Neptune!
Pacing thy lone rounds through the evanishing years,
From creation’s wonderful dawn guarding our frontiers:
Peering into the distance and watching the deep
Of horror and dangers deadly that never sleep
Creep stealthily from the impenetrable sweep
Of frightful desolation, and there fierce awaits
To hurl their fell attack on our far outward gates.
But an alert sentinel, ever on his rounds,
Is faithfully guarding our remote outer bounds.