Watchers of the Sky by Noyes, Alfred, 1880-1958

V

NEWTON

I

If I saw farther, 'twas because I stood On giant shoulders," wrote the king of thought, Too proud of his great line to slight the toils Of his forebears. He turned to their dim past, Their fading victories and their fond defeats, And knelt as at an altar, drawing all Their strengths into his own; and so went forth With all their glory shining in his face, To win new victories for the age to come. So, where Copernicus had destroyed the dream We called our world; where Galileo watched Those ancient firmaments melt, a thin blue smoke Into a vaster night; where Kepler heard Only stray fragments, isolated chords Of that tremendous music which should bind All things anew in one, Newton arose And carried on their fire. Around him reeled Through lingering fumes of hate and clouds of doubt, Lit by the afterglow of the Civil War, The dissolute throngs of that Walpurgis night Where all the cynical spirits that deny Danced with the vicious lusts that drown the soul In flesh too gross for Circe or her swine. But, in his heart, he heard one instant voice. _"On with the torch once more, make all things new, Build the new heaven and earth, and save the world."_

Ah, but the infinite patience, the long months Lavished on tasks that, to the common eye, Were insignificant, never to be crowned With great results, or even with earth's rewards. Could Rembrandt but have painted him, in those hours Making his first analysis of light Alone, there, in his darkened Cambridge room At Trinity! Could he have painted, too, The secret glow, the mystery, and the power, The sense of all the thoughts and unseen spires That soared to heaven around him! He stood there, Obscure, unknown, the shadow of a man In darkness, like a grey dishevelled ghost, --Bare-throated, down at heel, his last night's supper Littering his desk, untouched; his glimmering face, Under his tangled hair, intent and still,-- Preparing our new universe. He caught The sunbeam striking through that bullet-hole In his closed shutter--a round white spot of light Upon a small dark screen. He interposed A prism of glass. He saw the sunbeam break And spread upon the screen its rainbow band Of disentangled colours, all in scale Like notes in music; first, the violet ray, Then indigo, trembling softly into blue; Then green and yellow, quivering side by side; Then orange, mellowing richly into red. Then, in the screen, he made a small, round hole Like to the first; and through it passed once more Each separate coloured ray. He let it strike Another prism of glass, and saw each hue Bent at a different angle from its path, The red the least, the violet ray the most; But all in scale and order, all precise As notes in music. Last, he took a lens, And, passing through it all those coloured rays, Drew them together again, remerging all On that dark screen, in one white spot of light.