Around one deeper Light, revealed by law, Beyond all vision, past all understanding. Yet darkly shadowed forth for dreaming men On earth in music... Music, all comes back To music in the end. Then, in the gloom Of the Octagon Chapel, the dreamer lifted up His face, as if to all those great forebears. The quivering organ rolled upon the dusk His dream of that new symphony,--the sun Chanting to all his planets on their way While, stop to stop replying, height o'er height, His planets answered, voices of a dream: THE SUN Light, on the far faint planets that attend me! Light! But for me-the fury and the fire. My white-hot maelstroms, the red storms that rend me Can yield them still the harvest they desire, I kiss with light their sunward-lifted faces. With dew-drenched flowers I crown their dusky brows. They praise me, lightly, from their pleasant places. Their birds belaud me, lightly, from their boughs. And men, on lute and lyre, have breathed their pleasure. They have watched Apollo's golden chariot roll; Hymned his bright wheels, but never mine that measure A million leagues of flame from Pole to Pole. Like harbour-lights the stars grow wide before me, I draw my worlds ten thousand leagues a day. Their far blue seas like April eyes adore me. They follow, dreaming, on my soundless way. How should they know, who wheel around my burning, What torments bore them, or what power am I, I, that with all those worlds around me turning, Sail, every hour, from sky to unplumbed sky? My planets, these live embers of my passion, These children of my hurricanes of flame, Flung thro' the night, for midnight to refashion, Praise, and forget, the splendour whence they came. THE EARTH _Was it a dream that, in those bright dominions, Are other worlds that sing, with lives like mine, Lives that with beating hearts and broken pinions Aspire and fall, half-mortal, half-divine? A grain of dust among those glittering legions-- Am I, I only, touched with joy and tears? 0, silver sisters, from your azure regions, Breathe, once again, your music of the spheres:--_ VENUS A nearer sun, a rose of light arises, To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers, To paint my clouds with ever new surprises And wreathe with mist my rosier domes and towers; Where now, to praise their gods, a throng assembles Whose hopes and dreams no sphere but mine has known. On other worlds the same warm sunlight trembles; But life, love, worship, these are mine alone. MARS And now, as dewdrops in the dawn-light glisten, Remote and cold--see--Earth and Venus roll. We signalled them--in music! Did they listen? Could they not hear those whispers of the soul?