The victors may forget us. What of that?
Theirs be the palms, the shouting, and the praise.
Ours be the fathers' glory in the sons.
Ours the delight of giving, the deep joy
Of labouring, on the cliff's face, all night long,
Cutting them foot-holes in the solid rock,
Whereby they climb so gaily to the heights,
And gaze upon their new-discovered worlds.
You will not find me there. When you descend,
Look for me in the darkness at the foot
Of those high cliffs, under the drifted leaves.
That's where we hide at last, we pioneers,
For we are very proud, and must be sought
Before the world can find us, in our graves.
There have been compensations. I have seen
In darkness, more perhaps than eyes can see
When sunlight blinds them on the mountain-tops;
Guessed at a glory past our mortal range,
And only mine because the night was mine.

Of those three systems of the universe,
The Ptolemaic, held by all the schools,
May yet be proven false. We yet may find
This earth of ours is not the sovran lord
Of all those wheeling spheres. Ourselves have marked
Movements among the planets that forbid
Acceptance of it wholly. Some of these
Are moving round the sun, if we can trust
Our years of watching. There are stranger dreams.
This radical, Copernicus, the priest,