Classic Poem

A strange misapprehension 'tis—and yet
Small wonder in a world of sense—that all
That moves with us seems motionless, while all
Apart from us appears processional.
The common mind thinks all beneath is fixed,
Deems all above a flux, while the unseen
Seems negligible, evanescent, aye,
Unpractical.

Quest of reality
Means progress, but discovers disturb
Opinions and to all appearances
Unprop the world. When truth invincible
Bears down into an ocean of wrong thought
And all the fixed conviction of the past
Is staggered, jolted, dislocated, found
Dissolved, it is small wonder if the priests
Would kill the prophets, thinking thus to stem
The rivers of inrushing light.

Arouse
The wonder in the soul that all may know
How this green hanging-garden of a world
Is swinging on through space upheld by law,
Or—what you will—a hand, a heart, a God
Who holds His star-dominions up and bears
Them on through the ethereal deep! but if
Upon a cross of prejudice you nail
This wonder, when a thousand years have passed
Men will, as now, be ignorant and blind
Assuming still that all that is unseen
Is nought.

Here stop and think. What if the laws
That move the pendulum, the meteorite,
The star, are but one law, which neither I
Have found, nor Kepler, nor Copernicus!
They both are dead, and I am old. These eyes,
That saw so much ne'er seen before, are blind.
These ears are deaf that suffered not the lips
To speak until I heard God's voice. This form
Is vexed with twinge and disability.
But soon a greater Kepler may arise,
A new Copernicus, to bind, with one
Great law, the atom to the star, and find
One order of majestic harmony
Throughout the universe.

No falsity
Can choke the Truth; no prejudice can dim
The white light of the Law. A fact when found
And firm-establisht by experiment
Can have no sudden revocation. Who
Shall countermand a fast-entrenchèd law?
No prestige of authority can save
A lie, though forced from Galileo's lips
By fire, amid the drift of winnowing light
That sifts the truth as on the wind-swept hills.
The formulæ of men, by councils sealed,
Must by experience be signatured,
For only thus the authenticity
Of God's own word is known.

Now must I rest,
So sore I feel the burden of the years.
My force is spent. Lend me your strength, I pray,
And lead me to my couch.