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 | Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas |  |
And if these wonders we must with wonder abandon,
Astronomy's Cosmos, the Immense, and those physical laws
That link mind to matter, laws mutual in revelation,
Which measure and analyse Nature's primordial orgasm,
Lifegiving omnipotential Light, its speed to determine,
Untwist its rainbow of various earthcoloring rays,
Counting strictly to each its own millionth-millimetred
Wave-length, and mapping out on fray'd diffraction of ether
All the adust elements and furnaced alchemy of heav'n;
Laws which atone the disorder of infinit observation
With tyrannous numbers and abstract theory, closing
Protean Nature with nets of principle exact;
Her metamorphoses transmuting by correlation,
All heat, all chemical concourse or electrical action,
All force and all motion of all matter, or subtle or gross:—
Astronomy's Cosmos, the Immense, and those physical laws
That link mind to matter, laws mutual in revelation,
Which measure and analyse Nature's primordial orgasm,
Lifegiving omnipotential Light, its speed to determine,
Untwist its rainbow of various earthcoloring rays,
Counting strictly to each its own millionth-millimetred
Wave-length, and mapping out on fray'd diffraction of ether
All the adust elements and furnaced alchemy of heav'n;
Laws which atone the disorder of infinit observation
With tyrannous numbers and abstract theory, closing
414
Her metamorphoses transmuting by correlation,
All heat, all chemical concourse or electrical action,
All force and all motion of all matter, or subtle or gross:—
If we these wonders, I say, with wonder abandon,
Nor can for mental heaviness their high study pursue,
Yet no story of adventures or fabulous exploit
Of famous'd heroes hath so romantic a discourse,
As these growing annals of long heav'n-scaling achievement
And far discoveries, which he who idly neglecteth
Is but a boor as truly ridiculous as the village clown,
In whose thought the pleasant sun-ball performeth a circuit
Daily above mother earth, and resteth nightly beneath her.
Nor can for mental heaviness their high study pursue,
Yet no story of adventures or fabulous exploit
Of famous'd heroes hath so romantic a discourse,
As these growing annals of long heav'n-scaling achievement
And far discoveries, which he who idly neglecteth
Is but a boor as truly ridiculous as the village clown,
In whose thought the pleasant sun-ball performeth a circuit
Daily above mother earth, and resteth nightly beneath her.
| Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas | |