Just then come forth, all life and enterprise;
While he in his old age,...
... exploring with his staff,
His eyes upturned as to the golden sun,
His eyeballs idly rolling."
This may have been the punishment of his recantation,--not Inquisitorial torture, but the consciousness that he had lost his honor. Poor Galileo! thine illustrious visitor, when his affliction came, could cast his sightless eyeballs inward, and see and tell "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,"--not
"Rocks, caves, lakes, bogs, fens, and shades of death,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,"
but of "eternal Providence," and "Eden with surpassing glory crowned," and "our first parents," and of "salvation," "goodness infinite," of "wisdom," which when known we need no higher though all the stars we know by name,--