He saw her in mid-winter, hurrying out, A slim shawled figure through the drifted snow, To help him; saw her fall with a stifled cry, Gashing herself upon that buried hook, And struggling up, out of the blood-stained drift, To greet him with a smile. "For any soldier, This wound," the surgeon muttered, "would have meant Six weeks in hospital." Not six days for her! "I am glad these nights were cloudy, and we lost So little," was all she said. Sir John pulled out Another stop. A little ironical march Of flutes began to goose-step through the gloom. He saw that first "success"! Ay, call it so! The royal command,--the court desires to see The planet Saturn and his marvellous rings On Friday night. The skies, on Friday night, Were black with clouds. "Canute me no Canutes," Muttered their new magician, and unpacked His telescope. "You shall see what you can see." He levelled it through a window; and they saw "Wonderful! Marvellous! Glorious! Eh, what, what!" A planet of paper, with a paper ring, Lit by a lamp, in a hollow of Windsor Park, Among the ferns, where Herne the Hunter walks, And Falstaff found that fairies live on cheese. Thus all were satisfied; while, above the clouds-- The thunder of the pedals reaffirmed-- The Titan planet, every minute, rolled Three hundred leagues upon his awful way. Then, through that night, the _vox humana_spoke With deeper longing than Lucretius knew When, in his great third book, the somber chant Kindled and soared on those exultant wings, Praising the master's hand from which he, too, --Father, discoverer, hero--caught the fire. It spoke of those vast labours, incomplete, But, through their incompletion, infinite In beauty, and in hope; the task bequeathed From dying hand to hand. Close to his grave Like a _memento mori_ stood the hulk Of that great weapon rusted and outworn, Which once broke down the barriers of the sky. _"Perrupit claustra"_; yes, and bridged their gulfs; For, far beyond our solar scheme, it showed The law that bound our planets binding still Those coupled suns which year by year he watched Around each other circling. Had our own Some distant comrade, lost among the stars? Should we not, one day, just as Kepler drew His planetary music and its laws From all those faithful records Tycho made, Discern at last what vaster music rules The vaster drift of stars from deep to deep; Around what awful Poles, those wisps of light Those fifteen hundred universes move? One signal, even now, across the dark, Declared their worlds confederate with our own; For, carrying many secrets, which we now Slowly decipher, one swift messenger comes Across the abyss... The light that, flashing through the immeasurable, From universe to universe proclaims The single reign of law that binds them all. We shall break up those rays and, in their lines