Silence a moment held them, loth to break The spell of that strange dream, "One proof the more" Said Wotton at last, "that songs can mount and fly To truth; for this fantastic vision of yours Of life in other spheres, awakes in me, Either that slumbering knowledge of Socrates, Or some strange premonition that the years Will prove it true. This music leads us far From all our creeds, except that faith in law. Your quest for knowledge--how it rests on that! How sure the soul is that if truth destroy The temple, in three days the truth will build A nobler temple; and that order reigns In all things. Even your atheist builds his doubt On that strange faith; destroys his heaven and God In absolute faith that his own thought is true To law, God's lanthorn to our stumbling feet; And so, despite himself, he worships God, For where true souls are, there are God and heaven."-- "It is an ancient wisdom. Long ago," Said Kepler, "under the glittering Eastern sky, The shepherd king looked up at those great stars, Those ordered hosts, and cried _Caeli narrant Gloriam Dei!_ Though there be some to-day Who'd ape Lucretius, and believe themselves Epicureans, little they know of him Who, even in utter darkness, bowed his head, To something nobler than the gods of Rome Reigning beyond the darkness. They accept The law, the music of these ordered worlds; And straight deny the law's first postulate, That out of nothingness nothing can be born, Nor greater things from less. Can music rise By chance from chaos, as they said that star In Serpentarius rose? I told them, then, That when I was a boy, with time to spare, I played at anagrams. Out of my Latin name _Johannes Keplerus_ came that sinister phrase _Serpens in akuleo_. Struck by this, I tried again, but trusted it to chance. I took some playing cards, and wrote on each One letter of my name. Then I began To shuffle them; and, at every shuffle, I read The letters, in their order, as they came, To see what meaning chance might give to them. Wotton, the gods and goddesses must have laughed To see the weeks I lost in studying chance; For had I scattered those cards into the black Epicurean eternity, I'll swear They'd still be playing at leap-frog in the dark, And show no glimmer of sense. And yet--to hear Those wittols talk, you'd think you'd but to mix A bushel of good Greek letters in a sack And shake them roundly for an age or so, To pour the Odyssey out. At last, I told, Those disputants what my wife had said. One night When I was tired and all my mind a-dust With pondering on their atoms, I was called To supper, and she placed before me there A most delicious salad. 'It would appear,' I thought aloud, 'that if these pewter dishes, Green hearts of lettuce, tarragon, slips of thyme, Slices of hard boiled egg, and grains of salt. With drops of water, vinegar and oil, Had in a bottomless gulf been flying about