University of Virginia Library

So learned we what in the outside world
Had happened, since we were last night whirled
Alive—unharmed—to a deathless grave
(Minds always, that had prophetic touch,
Have known and said that all graves were such)!
We heard that efforts prolonged and brave,
Were being employed to bring again
Our hermit-throng to the hearts of men;
We heard that the big world had progressed,
Though of our assistance dispossessed;
That people had lived and thrived the same
As ever before: and soon there came
Gay greetings from cronies up and down,
Addressed to our “newly settled town”,
With messages both to cheer and chafe,
That hoped we were “happy as well as safe.”
They wired us of coming banquet-fare,
And hoped we would hurry and get our share;
Smart jests that were new or of long ago,
Were tickingly banded to and fro,
And though the weather was surely not,
The exhumed wire was each moment “hot.”
And when, this novelty past, the day
Grew weary again as it wore away,
An old microscopist in our band,
Drew forth from his baggage, with cautious hand,
An instrument which, as sight unbars,
Turns atoms to giants, and motes to stars.
He made us clearly to understand,
We dwelt that day in a wonderland:
His strange exhibits gave us to know
The palaced crystals of ice and snow:
How some of these children of stress and storm
Were gems of exact and dainty form;
How flowers that press—not wholly in vain—
Their fair cold cheeks to the window-pane,
Have brothers and sisters that repose
In wide-spread gardens of drifting snows;
(Not in the midst of the summer sheen
Are all of the flowers that “blush unseen”!)
We learned from him that we dwelt that day
Not in a prison of frozen clay;
Not in long jail-cells sojourning,
But one of the palaces of the King!