Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/138

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126
HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK

He has stretched him quietly down at length,
To bask in the starlight his giant strength;
And Time shall here a tough[1] morsel find.
For his steel-devouring teeth to grind.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

He will grind it at last, as grind it he must,
And its brass and its iron shall be clay and dust;
But scathless ages[2] shall roll away.
And nurture its frame in its form's decay.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

A new year dawns and the old year's past,
God send us a happy one like the last,
A little more sun and a little less rain.
To save us from cough and rheumatic pain.
Merrily, merrily, &c.

God grant that its end this group may find
In love and in harmony fondly joined ;
And that some of us fifty years hence, once more,
May make the old Telescope's echoes roar.


Chorus, fortissimo.


Merrily, merrily, let us all sing.
And make the old Telescope rattle and ring.

Where the great telescope raised its eye heavenward, a church has been built to direct men's thoughts to do what brother and sister long did in loving fellowship, "mind the heavens." It was a fitting consecration of the hallowed ground. In speaking of his magnificent work in 1813, Herschel said to Thomas Campbell the poet, "with an air, not of the least pride, but with a greatness and simplicity of expression that struck me with wonder, 'I have looked farther into

  1. ? rough,
  2. ? rays,