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.

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!