Sonnet XVI
The Spectroscope
ALL honor to that keen Promethean soul
Who caught the prismic hues of Jove and Mars,
And from the glances of the dædal stars,
And from the fiery sun, the secret stole
That all are parts of one primeval Whole,—
One substance beaming through Creation’s bars
Consent and peace, amid the chemic wars
Of gases and of atoms. Yonder roll
The planets; yonder, baffling human thought,
Suns, systems, all whose burning hearts are wooed
To one confession—so hath Science caught
Those eye-beams frank, whose speech cannot delude,—
How of one stuff our mortal earth is wrought
With stars in their divine infinitude.
