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(An Ode to Halley’s Comet)
STRANGE Wanderer out of the deeps, | |
| Whence, journeying, come you? | |
| From what far, unsunned sleeps | |
| Did fate foredoom you, | |
| Returning for ever again | 5 |
| Through the surgings of man, | |
| A flaming, awesome portent of dread | |
| Down the centuries’ span? | |
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| Riddle! from the dark unwrung | |
| By all earth’s sages; | 10 |
| God’s fiery torch from His hand outflung, | |
| To flame through the ages: | |
| Thou Satan of planets eterne, | |
| ’Mid angry path, | |
| Chained, in circlings vast, to burn | 15 |
| Out ancient wrath. | |
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| By what dread hand first loosed | |
| From fires eternal? | |
| With majesties dire infused | |
| Of force supernal, | 20 |
| Takest thy headlong way | |
| O’er the highways of space? | |
| Oh, wonderful, blossoming flower of fear | |
| On the sky’s far face! | |
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| What secrets of destiny’s will | 25 |
| In thy wild burning? | |
| What portent dire of humanity’s ill | |
| In thy returning? | |
| Or art thou brand of love | |
| In masking of bale? | 30 |
| And bringest thou ever some mystical surcease | |
| For all who wail? | |
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| Perchance, O Visitor dread, | |
| Thou hast thine appointed | |
| Task, thou bolt of the vasts outsped! | 35 |
| With God’s anointed, | |
| Performest some endless toil | |
| In the universe wide: | |
| Feeding or curing some infinite need | |
| Where the vast worlds ride. | 40 |
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| Once, only once, thy face | |
| Will I view in this breathing; | |
| Just for a space thy majesty trace | |
| ’Mid earth’s mad seething: | |
| Ere I go hence to my place, | 45 |
| As thou to thy deeps; | |
| Thou flambent core of a universe dread, | |
| Where all else sleeps. | |
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| But thou and man’s spirit are one: | |
| Thou poet! Thou flaming | 50 |
| Soul of the dauntless sun, | |
| Past all reclaiming! | |
| One in that red unrest, | |
| That yearning, that surge, | |
| That mounting surf of the infinite dream | 55 |
| O’er eternity’s verge. | |
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