I watch my moving hands, and they grow strange! What is it moves this body? What am I? How came I here, a ghost, to hear that voice Of infinite compassion, far away, Above the throbbing strings, hark! _Comfort ye_... If music lead us to a cry like this, I think I shall not lose it in the skies. I do but follow its own secret law As long ago I sought to understand Its golden mathematics; taught myself The way to lay one stone upon another, Before I dared to dream that I might build My Holy City of Song. I gave myself To all its branches. How they stared at me, Those men of "sensibility," when I said That algebra, conic sections, fluxions, all Pertained to music. Let them stare again. Old Kepler knew, by instinct, what I now Desire to learn. I have resolved to leave No tract of heaven unvisited. To-night --The music carries me back to it again!-- I see beyond this island universe, Beyond our sun, and all those other suns That throng the Milky Way, far, far beyond, A thousand little wisps, faint nebulae, Luminous fans and milky streaks of fire; Some like soft brushes of electric mist Streaming from one bright point; others that spread And branch, like growing systems; others discrete, Keen, ripe, with stars in clusters; others drawn back By central forces into one dense death, Thence to be kindled into fire, reborn, And scattered abroad once more in a delicate spray Faint as the mist by one bright dewdrop breathed At dawn, and yet a universe like our own; Each wisp a universe, a vast galaxy Wide as our night of stars. The Milky Way In which our sun is drowned, to these would seem Less than to us their faintest drift of haze; Yet we, who are borne on one dark grain of dust Around one indistinguishable spark Of star-mist, lost in one lost feather of light, Can by the strength of our own thought, ascend Through universe after universe; trace their growth Through boundless time, their glory, their decay; And, on the invisible road of law, more firm Than granite, range through all their length and breadth, Their height and depth, past, present and to come. So, those who follow the great Work-master's law From small things up to great, may one day learn The structure of the heavens, discern the whole Within the part, as men through Love see God. Oh, holy night, deep night of stars, whose peace Descends upon the troubled mind like dew, Healing it with the sense of that pure reign Of constant law, enduring through all change; Shall I not, one day, after faithful years, Find that thy heavens are built on music, too, And hear, once more, above thy throbbing worlds This voice of all compassion, _Comfort ye,--_ Yes--_comfort ye, my people, saith your God?_ VII SIR JOHN HERSCHEL REMEMBERS