The Comet

Swift circuit-rider of the endless skies,

Thou wanderer of the outer, unknown air,

Amid those dim, uncharted regions there,

Imagination droops — in deep surprise

Man doth behold thee, and the fearful speed

At which thou spurrest on thy flaming steed.

Born of the dark and ever-deepening Past,

Who nurs'd thee there in yonder viewless space

Afar from earth — thy all-beholding face

Hath gazed unspeakable, with clear eye cast

Worldward on each magnificent return

As if of human progress thou wouldst learn.

And thou hast seen each triumph and each plan

By which the human race since human time

Hath learned at last Earth's secrets all-sublime

While rising from the elements to man —

Hast seen it triumph over sea and air

And universal knowledge hope to share.

Thy circuit measures well the age of man,

The epoch of a life — and few there be

Who seeing thee, thy face again may see,

For human life is but a little span,

With varying cycles of a different day,

And in diffusion wears itself away.

Child of the Sun, when first the human eye

Beheld thee coursing in the night afar

Like an illumined spectre of a star —

Beheld thy awful form against the sky

Strong men fell earthward with a coward-cry

On their pale lips, as if afraid to die —

And that brute King — Nero, the cruel King,

When looking on thy fiery face unknown,

Sate trembling on his little human throne,

And thought that thou didst evil tidings bring —

That thou wert writing on the distant skies

A doom from which no human king could rise.

Thy age is all unknown — man can but guess

The time when first the Sun thy circle set —

He can but guess thy secret birth — and yet

Observing thee his knowledge is not less;

He knows each cycle, each return to be

A moment in that vast eternity.

Recording-comet of th’ immortal space,

What history thy eye hath look'd upon

Since first thy airy, circling course was run!

What fallen pride! What scatterings of race!

Jerusalem and Nineveh and Rome

Didst thou behold from thy almighty dome —

Didst thou behold — their birth, their rise, their fall —

Low humbled by the under hordes at last,

With glory and fair triumphs in the past,

And footprints of destruction over all.

While thou, fleet comet, with a light divine

Continueth upon the earth to shine.

Speed on! swift comet — turn, wanderer, turn!

And with thy flaming, god-like pen of light

On heaven's scroll with burning letters write:

Live but to love, O earth!— to love and learn,

For while a comet's mighty cycles fail,

Love,— love and truth forever shall prevail.