This for me wer' enough: yet confin'd Gēology's field Counts not in all Scīence more than the planet to the Cosmos; Where our central Sun, almighty material author, And sustainer, appears as a half-consumed vanishing spark, Bearing along with it, entangled in immensity's onward Spiral eddies, the blacken'd dust-motes whirl'd off from around it. 110 But tho' man's microscopical functions measure all things By his small footprints, finger-spans and ticking of clocks, And thereby conceive the immense--such multiple extent As to defy Idēas of imperative cerebration,-- None the less observing, measuring, patiently recording, Hē mappeth out the utter wilderness of unlimited space; Carefully weigheth a weight to the sun, reckoneth for it its path Of trackless travelling, the precise momentary places Of the planets and their satellites, their annual orbits, Times, perturbations of times, and orbit of orbit. 120 What was Alexander's subduing of Asia, or that Sheep-worry of Europe, when pigmy Napoleon enter'd Her sovereign chambers, and her kings with terror eclips'd? His footsore soldiers inciting across the ravag'd plains, Thro' bloody fields of death tramping to an ugly disaster? Shows any crown, set above the promise (so rudely accomplisht) Of their fair godlike young faces, a glory to compare With the immortal olive that circles bold Galileo's Brows, the laurel'd halo[v]of Newton's unwithering fame? 129 Or what a child's surmise, how trifling a journey Columbus Adventur'd, to a land like that which he sail'd from arriving, If compar'd to Bessel's magic divination, awarding Magnificent Sirius[v]his dark and invisible bride; Or when Adams by Cam, (more nearly Leverrier in France,) From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Uranus, augur'd Where his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed, And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of space Drew him slowly whene'er he pass'd, and slowly released him! _Nil admirari!_ 'Tis surely a most shabby thinker 139 Who, looking on Nature, finds not the reflection appalling