THE INVISIBLE
(AT A LECTURE)
Such pictures of the heavens were never seen.
We stood at the steep edge of the abyss
And looked out on the making of the suns.
The skies were powdered with the white of stars
And the pale ghosts of systems yet to be;
While here and there a nebulous spiral told,
Against the dark, the story of the orbs—
From the impalpable condensing slow
Through ages infinite.
Each mighty shape
Seemed as the shape of speed—a whirling wheel
Stupendously revolving,
And yet no eye of man may see it stir.
(That moveless motion brings to the human brain
A hint of the large measurements of time—
Eternity made present.)
Such new sense
Of magnitudes that make our world an atom
Might crush the soul, did not this saving thought
Leap to the mind and lift it to clear hights:—
"'T is but the unseen that grows not old nor dies,
Suffers not change, nor waning, nor decay.
This that we see—this casual glimpse within
The seething pit of space; these million stars
And worlds in making, these are naught but matter;
These all are but the dust upon our feet,
And we who gaze forth fearless on the sight
Find not one equal, facing from the vast
Our sentient selves. Not one, sole, lonely star
In all the infinite glitter and deep light
Can make one conscious movement; all are slaves
