University of Virginia Library

CLOUDLAND.

Our walk through the progressive years
Is as we rose along strange tiers
Of telescopic stars, where lies
A mist upon our upward eyes
That shape and size and substance hides
Of all; but being near, there glides
A glory through them, and they grow
And centre to a special glow
Of light, and broaden and expand
And look divinely fair and grand
As high Selene: but when Time
And we have reached a loftier clime,
They darken downward dismally,
And sink into a lower sky,
And smoulder to our startled ken
The rancid marsh-lights of the fen;
And largest loveliest orbs and clear,
Behind a lesser light, but near,
Passing, grow dark in strange eclipse,
Or suck'd between the inky lips
Of darkness, die; the crowded light
Of systems all but infinite
Shrinks up into a single star—
A little glimmer faint and far
Upon the utmost verge of seeing;
The wonders of expected Being,
Risen to the keen meridian, glide
Forgotten down the further side;
Our stately planets, fair and full,
August, immortal, beautiful,
Shoot from their orbits and are gone;
The gorgeous comets one by one
That set the forward heaven ablaze,
Die in a dull mephitic haze
For ever: from her loftier land
If, looking down, the growing mind
Forget to spurn the things behind,
From that deep dark a vivid hand
Burns out, and writes upon the gloom
In liquid lightnings this their doom—
‘Upharsin!’