What art thou, ghostly visitant of flame?
Wouldst thou 'neath closer scrutiny resolve
In myriad suns that constellations frame,
Around which life-blest satellites revolve,
Like those unnumbered orbs which nightly creep
In dim procession o'er the azure steep,
As white-winged caravans the desert sweep?

Or art thou still an incandescent mass,
Acquiring form as hostile forces urge,
Through whose vast length continuous lightnings pass,
As to and fro its fiery billows surge?
Whose glowing atoms, whirled in ceaseless strife,
Where now chaotic anarchy is rife,
Shall yet become the fair abodes of life?

We know not; for the faint, exhausted rays
Which hither on Light's winged coursers come
From fires which ages since first lit their blaze,
One instant gleam, then perish, spent and dumb;
How sad the thought that, howsoe'er we yearn
Of life on yonder glittering orbs to learn,
We read no message, and could none return!

Yet this we know:--yon ring of spectral light,
Whose distance thrills the soul with solemn awe,
Can ne'er escape in its majestic might
The firm control of omnipresent law;
This mote descending to its bounden place,
Those suns whose radiance we can scarcely trace,