WILLIAM HERSCHEL CONDUCTS

Was it a dream?— that crowded concert-room

In Bath; that sea of ruffles and laced coats;

And William Herschel, in his powdered wig,

Waiting upon the platform, to conduct

His choir and Linley's orchestra? He stood

Tapping his music-rest, lost in his own thoughts

And ( did I hear or dream them? ) all were mine:

My periwig's askew, my ruffle stained

With grease from my new telescope!

Ach, to-morrow

How Caroline will be vexed, although she grows

Almost as bad as I, who cannot leave

My work-shop for one evening.

I must give

One last recital at St. Margaret's,

And then — farewell to music.

Who can lead

Two lives at once?

Yet — it has taught me much,

Thrown curious lights upon our world, to pass

From one life to another. Much that I took

For substance turns to shadow. I shall see

No throngs like this again; wring no more praise

Out of their hearts; forego that instant joy

— Let those who have not known it count it vain —

When human souls at once respond to yours.

Here, on the brink of fortune and of fame,

As men account these things, the moment comes

When I must choose between them and the stars;

And I have chosen.

Handel, good old friend,

We part to-night. Hereafter, I must watch

That other wand, to which the worlds keep time.

What has decided me? That marvelous night

When — ah, how difficult it will be to guide,

With all these wonders whirling through my brain!—

After a Pump-room concert I came home

Hot-foot, out of the fluttering sea of fans,

Coquelicot-ribboned belles and periwigged beaux,

To my Newtonian telescope.

The design

Was his; but more than half the joy my own,

Because it was the work of my own hand,

A new one, with an eye six inches wide,

Better than even the best that Newton made.

Then, as I turned it on the Gemini,

And the deep stillness of those constant lights,

Castor and Pollux, lucid pilot-stars,

Began to calm the fever of my blood,

I saw, O, first of all mankind I saw

The disk of my new planet gliding there

Beyond our tumults, in that realm of peace.

What will they christen it? Ach — not Herschel, no!

Nor Georgium Sidus, as I once proposed;

Although he scarce could lose it, as he lost

That world in‘ seventy-six.

Indeed, so far

From trying to tax it, he has granted me

How much?— two hundred golden pounds a year,

In the great name of science,— half the cost

Of one state-coach, with all those worlds to win!

Well — well — we must be grateful. This mad king

Has done far more than all the worldly-wise,

Who'll charge even this to madness.

I believe

One day he'll have me pardoned for that... crime,

When I escaped — deserted, some would say —

From those drill-sergeants in my native land;

Deserted drill for music, as I now

Desert my music for the orchestral spheres.

No. This new planet is only new to man.

His majesty has done much. Yet, as my friend

Declared last night, “Never did monarch buy

Honour so cheaply”; and — he has not bought it.

I think that it should bear some ancient name,

And wear it like a crown; some deep, dark name,

Like Uranus, known to remoter gods.

How strange it seems — this buzzing concert-room!

There's Doctor Burney bowing and, behind him,

His fox-eyed daughter Fanny.

Is it a dream,

These crowding midgets, dense as clustering bees

In some great bee-skep?

Now, as I lift my wand,

A silence grips them, and the strings begin,

Throbbing. The faint lights flicker in gusts of sound.

Before me, glimmering like a crescent moon,

The dim half circle of the choir awaits

Its own appointed time.

Beside me now,

Watching my wand, plump and immaculate

From buckled shoes to that white bunch of lace

Under his chin, the midget tenor rises,

Music in hand, a linnet and a king.

The bullfinch bass, that other emperor,

Leans back indifferently, and clears his throat

As if to say, “This prelude leads to Me!”

While, on their own proud thrones, on either hand,

The sumptuously bosomed midget queens,

Contralto and soprano, jealously eye

Each other's plumage.

Round me the music throbs

With an immortal passion. I grow aware

Of an appalling mystery.... We, this throng

Of midgets, playing, listening, tense and still,

Are sailing on a midget ball of dust

We call our planet; will have sailed through space

Ten thousand leagues before this music ends.

What does it mean? Oh, God, what can it mean?—

This weird hushed ant-hill with a thousand eyes;

These midget periwigs; all those little blurs,

Tier over tier, of faces, masks of flesh,

Corruptible, hiding each its hopes and dreams,

Its tragi-comic dreams.

And all this throng

Will be forgotten, mixed with dust, crushed out,

Before this book of music is outworn

Or that tall organ crumbles. Violins

Outlast their players. Other hands may touch

That harpsichord; but ere this planet makes

Another threescore journeys round its sun,

These breathing listeners will have vanished. Whither?

I watch my moving hands, and they grow strange!

What is it moves this body? What am I?

How came I here, a ghost, to hear that voice

Of infinite compassion, far away,

Above the throbbing strings, hark! Comfort ye...

If music lead us to a cry like this,

I think I shall not lose it in the skies.

I do but follow its own secret law

As long ago I sought to understand

Its golden mathematics; taught myself

The way to lay one stone upon another,

Before I dared to dream that I might build

My Holy City of Song. I gave myself

To all its branches. How they stared at me,

Those men of “sensibility,” when I said

That algebra, conic sections, fluxions, all

Pertained to music. Let them stare again.

Old Kepler knew, by instinct, what I now

Desire to learn. I have resolved to leave

No tract of heaven unvisited.

To-night

— The music carries me back to it again!—

I see beyond this island universe,

Beyond our sun, and all those other suns

That throng the Milky Way, far, far beyond,

A thousand little wisps, faint nebulae,

Luminous fans and milky streaks of fire;

Some like soft brushes of electric mist

Streaming from one bright point; others that spread

And branch, like growing systems; others discrete,

Keen, ripe, with stars in clusters; others drawn back

By central forces into one dense death,

Thence to be kindled into fire, reborn,

And scattered abroad once more in a delicate spray

Faint as the mist by one bright dewdrop breathed

At dawn, and yet a universe like our own;

Each wisp a universe, a vast galaxy

Wide as our night of stars.

The Milky Way

In which our sun is drowned, to these would seem

Less than to us their faintest drift of haze;

Yet we, who are borne on one dark grain of dust

Around one indistinguishable spark

Of star-mist, lost in one lost feather of light,

Can by the strength of our own thought, ascend

Through universe after universe; trace their growth

Through boundless time, their glory, their decay;

And, on the invisible road of law, more firm

Than granite, range through all their length and breadth,

Their height and depth, past, present and to come.

So, those who follow the great Work-master's law

From small things up to great, may one day learn

The structure of the heavens, discern the whole

Within the part, as men through Love see God.

Oh, holy night, deep night of stars, whose peace

Descends upon the troubled mind like dew,

Healing it with the sense of that pure reign

Of constant law, enduring through all change;

Shall I not, one day, after faithful years,

Find that thy heavens are built on music, too,

And hear, once more, above thy throbbing worlds

This voice of all compassion, Comfort ye,—

Yes — comfort ye, my people, saith your God?