Limanora : $b the island of progressSweven, Godfrey
Science
Limanora : $b the island of progress
Sweven, Godfrey
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Science fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
From the use of this little instrument it came to be seen that their
telescopes could by a little modification and addition be made to tell
out in music the scenes they witnessed and recorded. Step by step the
astronomic families advanced till at last they reached the wonderful
duomovamolan, or cosmophone, which, facing the heavens unbrokenly
for generations, stored up the music of the spheres in their various
changes. It was this instrument we heard as we gazed into the hitherto
unfathomed depths of night. The worlds themselves in their motion
played upon it, and through it upon our souls. No human thought could
have conceived the marvels of harmony that rang through the great
auditorium. We felt as if we had been present at the creation of the
universe and our thoughts ranged through infinite space. A dream of
the most tremendous kind was being enacted before our waking senses.
How poor seemed the whole long history of life upon our earth! Thought
was the only element in us akin with infinity or like to last through
eternity, the thought that could thus span the abysses between the
systems of worlds and comprehend these cosmic melodies still ringing in
our ears.
When the treasured-up music of the spheric movements of the past
ceased, the night itself, the very sky we were contemplating began to
stir fresh harmonies through the lenses of the subsidiary towers. We
gazed, and the stars in their silver motions, motions unnoticed by
the naked eye, told their tale in sweet harmony. These new symphonies
were simpler than the operas of creation and decadence that we had
been listening to and, after those titanic effects, seemed almost
monotonous, so few complications had they. They soothed the souls lost
in the sublimities of infinite space and time and we came gentlier
down to the earth on which our life was cast. We still trod on air,
our heads were still amongst the stars, but the earth was near us and
counted as one of the myriad worlds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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