Chapter III

In that deep night where Galileo groped Like a blind giant in dreams to find what power Held moons and planets to their constant road Through vastness, ordered like a moving fleet; What law so married them that they could not clash Or sunder, but still kept their rhythmic pace As if those ancient tales indeed were true And some great angel helmed each gliding sphere; Many had sought an answer. Many had caught Gleams of the truth; and yet, as when a torch Is waved above a multitude at night, And shows wild streams of faces, all confused, But not the single law that knits them all Into an ordered nation, so our skies For all those fragmentary glimpses, whirled In chaos, till one eagle-spirit soared, Found the one law that bound them all in one, And through that awful unity upraised The soul to That which made and guides them all.

Did Newton, dreaming in his orchard there Beside the dreaming Witham, see the moon Burn like a huge gold apple in the boughs And wonder why should moons not fall like fruit? Or did he see as those old tales declare (Those fairy-tales that gather form and fire Till, in one jewel, they pack the whole bright world) A ripe fruit fall from some immortal tree Of knowledge, while he wondered at what height Would this earth-magnet lose its darkling power? Would not the fruit fall earthward, though it grew High o'er the hills as yonder brightening cloud? Would not the selfsame power that plucked the fruit Draw the white moon, then, sailing in the blue? Then, in one flash, as light and song are born, And the soul wakes, he saw it--this dark earth Holding the moon that else would fly through space To her sure orbit, as a stone is held In a whirled sling; and, by the selfsame power, Her sister planets guiding all their moons; While, exquisitely balanced and controlled In one vast system, moons and planets wheeled Around one sovran majesty, the sun.