"What do you mean?"--"It's moving," cried the chief,
They laughed again, and watched his glimmering face
High overhead against that moving tower.
"Come up and see, then!"
One by one they went,
And, though each laughed as he returned to earth,
Their souls were in their eyes.
Then I, too, looked,
And saw that insignificant spark of light
Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn,
A swimming world, a perfect rounded pearl,
Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed,
I saw a miracle,--right on its upmost edge
A tiny mound of white that slowly rose,
Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear
And swam in heaven above its parent world
To greet its three bright sister-moons.
A moon,
Of Jupiter, no more, but clearer far
Than mortal eyes had seen before from earth,
O, beautiful and clear beyond all dreams
Was that one silver phrase of the starry tune
Which Galileo's "old discoverer" first
Dimly revealed, dissolving into clouds
The imagined fabric of our universe.
_"Jupiter stands in heaven and will stand
Though all the sycophants bark at him,"_ he cried,
Hailing the truth before he, too, went down,
Whelmed in the cloudy wreckage of that dream.