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

VII

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL REMEMBERS

True type of all, from his own father's hand He caught the fire; and, though he carried it far Into new regions; and, from southern fields Of yellow lupin, added host on host To those bright armies which his father knew, Surely the crowning hour of all his life Was when, his task accomplished, he returned A lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrine Of first beginnings and his father's youth. There, in the Octagon Chapel, with bared head Grey, honoured for his father and himself, He touched the glimmering keyboard, touched the books Those dear lost hands had touched so long ago.

"Strange that these poor inanimate things outlast The life that used them. Yes. I should like to try This good old friend of his. You'll leave me here An hour or so?" His hands explored the stops; And, while the music breathed what else were mute, His mind through many thoughts and memories ranged. Picture on picture passed before him there In living colours, painted on the gloom: Not what the world acclaimed, the great work crowned, But all that went before, the years of toil; The years of infinite patience, hope, despair. He saw the little house where all began, His father's first resolve to explore the sky, His first defeat, when telescopes were found Too costly for a music-master's purse; And then that dogged and all-conquering will Declaring, "Be it so. I'll make my own, A better than even the best that Newton made." He saw his first rude telescope--a tube Of pasteboard, with a lens at either end; And then,--that arduous growth to size and power With each new instrument, as his knowledge grew; And, to reward each growth, a deeper heaven. He saw the good Aunt Caroline's dismay When her trim drawing-room, as by wizardry, turned Into a workshop, where her brother's hands Cut, ground and burnished, hour on aching hour, Month after month, new mirrors of the sky.

Yet, while from dawn to dark her brother moved Around some new-cut mirror, burnishing it, Knowing that if he once removed his hands The surface would be dimmed and must forego Its heaven for ever, her quiet hands would raise Food to his lips; or, with that musical voice Which once--for she, too, offered her sacrifice-- Had promised her fame, she whiled away the hours Reading how, long ago, Aladdin raised The djinns, by burnishing that old battered lamp; Or, from Cervantes, how one crazy soul Tilting at windmills, challenged a purblind world.

He saw her seized at last by that same fire, Burning to help, a sleepless Vestal, dowered With lightning-quickness, rushing from desk to clock, Or measuring distances at dead of night Between the lamp-micrometer and his eyes.