The Great Comet

What is it out of the Orient, up-tossed like a fiery wing,
Or the blaze of conflagration a burning world might fling?
New splendor among the morning stars: what anthem shall it sing?

O, terrible in its beauty as the march of a bannered host,
And beautiful in its terrors as Lucifer, the lost,
It pales the spray where the Milky Way breaks on our gloomy coast!

It comes from the depths of either, from the wondrous star-lit voids.
Shaking a blinding torch o’er the shrinking asteroids;
Aquarius behind his urn the fiery flight avoids.

The twins of Jove and Leds, the Dioscuri, pale,
Though their mighty sire bends o’er them, their hearts within them fall,
Seeing a flame-haired maniac world rush blazing on their trail.

Red Taurus leaps to the zenith and casts a wild look back;
Orlon grasps his glittering sword as he glances down his track. 
Even bright Selene, stealing by, feels all her bloom grow black.

There runs a timorous shiver through the huddling Pleiades;
The golden chords of Lyra jar with the tremor of her knees;
And every star, or near or far, a threatful splendor sees.

What is it, cheer or menace? The light of a coming Messiah,
Or a lifted brand in the unseen Hand that shall wrap the world in fire,
And shake the stars, like untimely figs, from the Zodiac’s glowing tire?

Is it a streaming banner o’er the marshalled hosts of God,
Who climb the steeps of the purple deeps to bear His name abroad,
Or the fire-flag of the Demon and the eldest sons of Fraud?

Is it the great Archangel, with the golden trump of doom,
To make the weak heart tremble and the bold brow gather gloom.
And send a blast, awakening, to the depths of the shuddering tomb?

Or one whose glory lightens earth, as he comes to cry aloud:
“Great Babylon is fallen! is fallen the city proud!
And nations drunken with her crimes are with her ruin bowed?”
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Nay, splendor of the Orient! thy wild, disheveled hair
Marks not a doomsday prophet, nor the Angel of Despair, —
The cool, gray eye of science has tracked thee to thy lair.

No corsair of the upper deeps who drives a lawless helm
Through the fleets of coasting planets, to crush and overwhelm, —
Thou hast thy course appointed by the Sovereign of thy realm.

We have scanned thy golden legend and the Master’s order read,
Whereby thy voyage erratic through the soundless gulf is led,
Around the great sun’s fiery cape to the regions dark and dead.

No war-announcing portent, no threat of a fiery doom,
Thou bringest at thy glorious birth from Night’s primeval womb, —
Own brother of the steadfast stars, that, fixed, around thee bloom.

And yet thou hast thy messages, all beautiful as thou art,
To the reverent soul of science and the poet’s awe-touched heart, 
And many a lesson to the wise thy glory may impart.

One boundless law is over the heavens; the Lord of their sabaoth, 
Who gave a path to Arcturus, Orion, and Mazzaroth,
Has marked thy way, that thou go not astray, thou sun-lamp’s golden moth!