There were no throngs to applaud them. Each alone, Without the heat of conflict laboured on, Consuming brain and nerve; for throngs applaud Only the flash and tinsel of their day, Never the quiet runners with the torch. Night after night they laboured. Line on line Of intricate figures, moving all in law, They marshalled. Their long columns formed and marched From battle to battle, and no sound was heard Of victory or defeat. They marched through snows Bleak as the drifts that broke Napoleon's pride And through a vaster desert. They drilled their hosts With that divine precision of the mind To which one second's error in a year Were anarchy, that precision which is felt Throbbing through music. Month on month they toiled, With worlds for ciphers. One rich autumn night Brooding over his figures there alone In Cambridge, Adams found them moving all To one solution. To the unseeing eye His long neat pages had no more to tell Than any merchant's ledger, yet they shone With epic splendour, and like trumpets pealed; _Three hundred million leagues beyond the path Of our remotest planet, drowned in night Another and a mightier planet rolls; In volume, fifty times more vast than earth, And of so huge an orbit that its year Wellnigh outlasts our nations. Though it moves A thousand leagues an hour, it has not ranged Thrice through its seasons since Columbus sailed, Or more than once since Galileo died._ He took his proofs to Greenwich. "Sweep the skies Within this limited region now," he said. "You'll find your moving planet. I'm not more Than one degree in error." He left his proofs; But Airy, king of Greenwich, looked askance At unofficial genius in the young, And pigeon-holed that music of the spheres. Nine months he waited till Le Verrier, too, Pointed to that same region of the sky. Then Airy, opening his big sleepy lids, Bade Challis use his telescope,--too late, To make that honour all his country's own; For all Le Verrier's proofs were now with Galle Who, being German, had his star-charts ready And, in that region, found one needlepoint Had moved. A monster planet! Honour to France! Honour to England, too, the cry began, Who found it also, though she drowsed at Greenwich. So--as the French said, with some sting in it-- "We gave the name of Neptune to our prize Because our neighbour England rules the sea." "Honour to all," say we; for, in these wars, Whoever wins a battle wins for all. But, most of all, honour to him who found The law that was a lantern to their feet,-- Newton, the first whose thought could soar beyond The bounds of human vision and declare, "Thus saith the law of Nature and of God Concerning things invisible." This new world What was it but one harmony the more In that great music which himself had heard,-- The chant of those reintegrated spheres Moving around their sun, while all things moved