Millions of æons have rolled away In the grand chorale which the stars rehearse, Since the note, so sweet in our song to-day, Was struck in the chord of the universe. The vast vibration went floating on Through the diapason of space and time, Till the impulse swelled to a deeper tone, And mellowed and thrilled with a finer rhyme. Backward and forward the atoms go In the surging tide of that soundless sea, Whose billows from nowhere to nowhere flow, As they break on the sands of eternity. Yet, through all the coasts of the endless All, In the ages to come, as in ages gone, We feel but the throb of that mystic thrall Which binds responsive the whole in one. We feel but the pulse of that viewless hand Which ever has been and still shall be, In the stellar orb and the grain of sand, Through nature's endless paternity. The smile which plays in the maiden's glance, Or stirs in the beat of an insect's wing, Is of kin with the north light's spectral dance, Or the dazzling zone of the planet's ring. From our lonely tower aloft in air, With the breezes around us, tranquil and free, When the storm rack pales in the lightning's glare, Or the starlight sleeps in the sleeping sea, We send our greeting through breathless space, To our distant cousins, the nebulæ, And catch in the comet's misty trace, But a drifting leaf from the tribal tree. The song we hum is but one faint sound In the hymn which echoes from pole to pole, Which fills the domes of creation's round, And catches its key from the over-soul. And when it ceases all life shall fail, Time's metronome shall arrested stand; All voice be voiceless, the stars turn pale, And the great conductor shall drop his wand. CHAPTER XVIII. A PIONEER IN AN UNKNOWN REALM. Thus, either present elements are the true elements, or there is a probability of eventually obtaining some more high and general power of Nature, even than electricity; and which, at the same time, might reveal to us an entirely new grade of the elements of matter, now hidden from our view and almost from our suspicion.--The Nature of the Chemical Elements. Faraday, 1836. A mysterious force exists in the vibrations of the ether, called sound, which science and invention have so far failed to utilize; but which, no doubt in the near future, will come under man's control, for driving the wheels of industry.--Thought as Force. E. S. Huntington. Force and forces-- No end of forces! Have they mind like men?