The Spectroscope

                                   I.
Long years ago the Wizard, calm and pale, 
     With patient fingers plied his crystal wedge, 
     And clove the sunbeam as you cleave a ledge 
With leaf from leaf of many-colored shale.
The triune ray seven-dyed with scale on scale
     That mixed their hues at each o'er folded edge, 
     Unwrapped her mystery on his magic page, 
And solved the rainbow and the peacock's tail.
But bars of darkness on his shield of light
     Still mocked his cunning in heraldic lore.
What tales they wrote of mystic depth and height
     He died unknowing, but his record bore
High trust in Truth, and gave to ages far
This unpretending word: "The Prismal Shadows are!”

                                   II.
Father to son bequeathed the unyielding fact 
     That sage repeated to succeeding sage,
     "A barren truth! why cumbers it thy page?"
Scoffed grimy Use impatient to exact 
From every word its worth in living act.
     The Wise Man waited the appointed age,
     When those black bars should loosen from their cage
A wing to sweep the interminable tract 
Of utmost heaven, and bring report to him, 
     How Sirius rushes on his lightning car, 
What burns in Alioth, and how speeds the dim 
     Receding spectre of the utmost star:
What feeds the comet's sublimated flame,
And how One Heart throbs through the universal frame.

                                   III.
No truth is barren that has vital root 
     In Nature's garden, where her lilies grace
     Low earth with stars, or stars, the lilies of space, 
Bloom through her endless borders! Here & shoot, 
And there a bud may hold you deaf and mute 
     With eager longing, till they light the face 
     With swift fruition, sunning their low place,
And Toil's brown arms o'er-run with golden fruit.
But long, long waiting tries the patient souls
     Who nurse the booming Century Plants of God:
Whole generations reach their marble goals,
     While the slow leaflets prick the heaving sod.
Yet come the flowers diviner for delay.
And shame our feeble faith and blossoms of a day.