Sir John Herschel Remembers Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQMRSTUVWXUYPWZA2B 2C2D2E2F2EG2H2GI2F2P J2K2I2ML2M2N2O2P2Q2R 2S2 F2S2T2S2U2 S2MPV2S2W2F2S2X2F2S2 S2S2Y2VMZ2A3S2A3S2A3 A3S2B3C3A3A3A3S2S2H2 C3ES2A3EF2S2S2S2S2D3 C3EC3A3S2A2S2C3EA3EA 3S2A3E3S2F3C3EEA3A3X 2A3G3A3A3MS2C3H3 I3EUJ3EEQA3A3A3ES2C3 A3S2 A3S2ES2A3EH2S2A3S2A3 K3A3S2A3C3EES2EA3S2A 3UF2S2EC3EEEEEQ2VS2A 3A3 EES2H2H3EA3S2S2A3S2A 3S2L3S2C3S2S2EG3C3M3 ES2K3S2A3N3L3A3S2S2S 2 A3S2O3F2A3A3C3A3S2C3 A3S2EP3S2S2S2A3EQ3S2 A3S2A3G3S2S2S2US2X2S 2O3S2A3S2A3C3EC3C3S2 VR3A3C3EH2S2S3 E S2F2S2F2 A3A3A3A3 F2R2F2R2 S2H2S2H2 C3C3C3C3 ET3ET3 N3 A3EA3E A3A3A3A3 A3 A3A3A3A3 A3EA3E A3 ER2ER2 S2S2S2S2 F2 F2A3F2A3 S2A3S2A3 E C3A3C3A3 S2BS2B A3 S2ES2E S2H2S2H2 E S2C3S2C3 S2E3S2E3 E C3C3C3C3 ET3ET3 C3 S2S2S2A3S2A3S2A3EC3E C3S2A3A3S2S2A3 MS2S3S2A3ES2U3F2A3S2 A3A3R2S2A3A3OR2C3R2A 3A3ES2S2ES2A3A3D3S2F EMIS2EES2S2S2S2V3A3S 2I3W3A3A3V3S2A3A3N3S 2S2F2S3S2F2H2A3S2S2N 3MA3A3ES2N3C3I3H2F2T 3 S2C3EA3X3 EA3A3EES2EE C3H2A3A3R2A3C3S2ES2S 2EA3A3I3S2A3S2A3A3EE O3C3A3S2Y3Y3

True type of all from his own father's hand	A
He caught the fire and though he carried it far	B
Into new regions and from southern fields	C
Of yellow lupin added host on host	D
To those bright armies which his father knew	E
Surely the crowning hour of all his life	F
Was when his task accomplished he returned	G
A lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrine	H
Of first beginnings and his father's youth	I
There in the Octagon Chapel with bared head	J
Grey honoured for his father and himself	K
He touched the glimmering keyboard touched the books	L
Those dear lost hands had touched so long ago	M
	-
Strange that these poor inanimate things outlast	N
The life that used them	O
Yes I should like to try	P
This good old friend of his You'll leave me here	Q
An hour or so	M
His hands explored the stops	R
And while the music breathed what else were mute	S
His mind through many thoughts and memories ranged	T
Picture on picture passed before him there	U
In living colours painted on the gloom	V
Not what the world acclaimed the great work crowned	W
But all that went before the years of toil	X
The years of infinite patience hope despair	U
He saw the little house where all began	Y
His father's first resolve to explore the sky	P
His first defeat when telescopes were found	W
Too costly for a music master's purse	Z
And then that dogged and all conquering will	A2
Declaring Be it so I'll make my own	B2
A better than even the best that Newton made	C2
He saw his first rude telescope a tube	D2
Of pasteboard with a lens at either end	E2
And then that arduous growth to size and power	F2
With each new instrument as his knowledge grew	E
And to reward each growth a deeper heaven	G2
He saw the good Aunt Caroline's dismay	H2
When her trim drawing room as by wizardry turned	G
Into a workshop where her brother's hands	I2
Cut ground and burnished hour on aching hour	F2
Month after month new mirrors of the sky	P
	-
Yet while from dawn to dark her brother moved	J2
Around some new cut mirror burnishing it	K2
Knowing that if he once removed his hands	I2
The surface would be dimmed and must forego	M
Its heaven for ever her quiet hands would raise	L2
Food to his lips or with that musical voice	M2
Which once for she too offered her sacrifice	N2
Had promised her fame she whiled away the hours	O2
Reading how long ago Aladdin raised	P2
The djinns by burnishing that old battered lamp	Q2
Or from Cervantes how one crazy soul	R2
Tilting at windmills challenged a purblind world	S2
	-
He saw her seized at last by that same fire	F2
Burning to help a sleepless Vestal dowered	S2
With lightning quickness rushing from desk to clock	T2
Or measuring distances at dead of night	S2
Between the lamp micrometer and his eyes	U2
	-
He saw her in mid winter hurrying out	S2
A slim shawled figure through the drifted snow	M
To help him saw her fall with a stifled cry	P
Gashing herself upon that buried hook	V2
And struggling up out of the blood stained drift	S2
To greet him with a smile	W2
For any soldier	F2
This wound the surgeon muttered would have meant	S2
Six weeks in hospital	X2
Not six days for her	F2
I am glad these nights were cloudy and we lost	S2
So little was all she said	S2
Sir John pulled out	S2
Another stop A little ironical march	Y2
Of flutes began to goose step through the gloom	V
He saw that first success Ay call it so	M
The royal command the court desires to see	Z2
The planet Saturn and his marvellous rings	A3
On Friday night The skies on Friday night	S2
Were black with clouds Canute me no Canutes	A3
Muttered their new magician and unpacked	S2
His telescope You shall see what you can see	A3
He levelled it through a window and they saw	A3
Wonderful Marvellous Glorious Eh what what	S2
A planet of paper with a paper ring	B3
Lit by a lamp in a hollow of Windsor Park	C3
Among the ferns where Herne the Hunter walks	A3
And Falstaff found that fairies live on cheese	A3
Thus all were satisfied while above the clouds	A3
The thunder of the pedals reaffirmed	S2
The Titan planet every minute rolled	S2
Three hundred leagues upon his awful way	H2
Then through that night the vox humanaspoke	C3
With deeper longing than Lucretius knew	E
When in his great third book the somber chant	S2
Kindled and soared on those exultant wings	A3
Praising the master's hand from which he too	E
Father discoverer hero caught the fire	F2
It spoke of those vast labours incomplete	S2
But through their incompletion infinite	S2
In beauty and in hope the task bequeathed	S2
From dying hand to hand	S2
Close to his grave	D3
Like a memento mori stood the hulk	C3
Of that great weapon rusted and outworn	E
Which once broke down the barriers of the sky	C3
Perrupit claustra yes and bridged their gulfs	A3
For far beyond our solar scheme it showed	S2
The law that bound our planets binding still	A2
Those coupled suns which year by year he watched	S2
Around each other circling	C3
Had our own	E
Some distant comrade lost among the stars	A3
Should we not one day just as Kepler drew	E
His planetary music and its laws	A3
From all those faithful records Tycho made	S2
Discern at last what vaster music rules	A3
The vaster drift of stars from deep to deep	E3
Around what awful Poles those wisps of light	S2
Those fifteen hundred universes move	F3
One signal even now across the dark	C3
Declared their worlds confederate with our own	E
For carrying many secrets which we now	E
Slowly decipher one swift messenger comes	A3
Across the abyss	A3
The light that flashing through the immeasurable	X2
From universe to universe proclaims	A3
The single reign of law that binds them all	G3
We shall break up those rays and in their lines	A3
And colours read the history of their stars	A3
Year after year the slow sure records grow	M
Awaiting their interpreter They shall see it	S2
Our sons in that far day the swift the strong	C3
The triumphing young eyed runners with the torch	H3
	-
No deep set boundary mark in Space or Time	I3
Shall halt or daunt them Who that once has seen	E
How truth leads on to truth shall ever dare	U
To set a bound to knowledge	J3
Would that he knew	E
So thought the visitant at that shadowy shrine	E
Even as the maker of a song can hear	Q
With the soul's ear far off the unstricken chords	A3
To which by its own inner law it climbs	A3
Would that my father knew how younger hands	A3
Completed his own planetary tune	E
How from the planet that his own eyes found	S2
The mind of man would plunge into the dark	C3
And blindfold find without the help of eyes	A3
A mightier planet in the depths beyond	S2
	-
Then while the reeds with quiet melodious pace	A3
Followed the dream as in a picture passed	S2
Adams the boy at Cambridge making his vow	E
By that still lamp alone in that deep night	S2
Beneath the crumbling battlements of St John's	A3
To know why Uranus uttermost planet known	E
Moved in a rhythm delicately astray	H2
From all the golden harmonies ordained	S2
By those known measures of its sister worlds	A3
Was there an unknown planet far beyond	S2
Sailing through unimaginable deeps	A3
And drawing it from its path	K3
Then challenging chords	A3
Echoed the prophecy that Sir John had made	S2
Guided by his own faith in Newton's law	A3
We have not found it but we feel it trembling	C3
Along the lines of our analysis now	E
As once Columbus from the shores of Spain	E
Felt the new continent	S2
Then in swift fugues began	E
A race between two nations for the prize	A3
Of that new world	S2
Le Verrier in France	A3
Adams in England each of them unaware	U
Of his own rival at the selfsame hour	F2
Resolved to find it	S2
Not by the telescope now	E
Skies might be swept for aeons ere one spark	C3
Among those myriads were both found and seen	E
To move at that vast distance round our sun	E
They worked by faith in law alone They knew	E
The wanderings of great Uranus and they knew	E
The law of Newton	E
By the midnight lamp	Q2
Pencil in hand shut in a four walled room	V
Each by pure thought must work his problem out	S2
Given that law to find the mass and place	A3
Of that which drew their planet from his course	A3
	-
There were no throngs to applaud them Each alone	E
Without the heat of conflict laboured on	E
Consuming brain and nerve for throngs applaud	S2
Only the flash and tinsel of their day	H2
Never the quiet runners with the torch	H3
Night after night they laboured Line on line	E
Of intricate figures moving all in law	A3
They marshalled Their long columns formed and marched	S2
From battle to battle and no sound was heard	S2
Of victory or defeat They marched through snows	A3
Bleak as the drifts that broke Napoleon's pride	S2
And through a vaster desert They drilled their hosts	A3
With that divine precision of the mind	S2
To which one second's error in a year	L3
Were anarchy that precision which is felt	S2
Throbbing through music	C3
Month on month they toiled	S2
With worlds for ciphers One rich autumn night	S2
Brooding over his figures there alone	E
In Cambridge Adams found them moving all	G3
To one solution To the unseeing eye	C3
His long neat pages had no more to tell	M3
Than any merchant's ledger yet they shone	E
With epic splendour and like trumpets pealed	S2
Three hundred million leagues beyond the path	K3
Of our remotest planet drowned in night	S2
Another and a mightier planet rolls	A3
In volume fifty times more vast than earth	N3
And of so huge an orbit that its year	L3
Wellnigh outlasts our nations Though it moves	A3
A thousand leagues an hour it has not ranged	S2
Thrice through its seasons since Columbus sailed	S2
Or more than once since Galileo died	S2
	-
He took his proofs to Greenwich Sweep the skies	A3
Within this limited region now he said	S2
You'll find your moving planet I'm not more	O3
Than one degree in error	F2
He left his proofs	A3
But Airy king of Greenwich looked askance	A3
At unofficial genius in the young	C3
And pigeon holed that music of the spheres	A3
Nine months he waited till Le Verrier too	S2
Pointed to that same region of the sky	C3
Then Airy opening his big sleepy lids	A3
Bade Challis use his telescope too late	S2
To make that honour all his country's own	E
For all Le Verrier's proofs were now with Galle	P3
Who being German had his star charts ready	S2
And in that region found one needlepoint	S2
Had moved A monster planet	S2
Honour to France	A3
Honour to England too the cry began	E
Who found it also though she drowsed at Greenwich	Q3
So as the French said with some sting in it	S2
We gave the name of Neptune to our prize	A3
Because our neighbour England rules the sea	S2
Honour to all say we for in these wars	A3
Whoever wins a battle wins for all	G3
But most of all honour to him who found	S2
The law that was a lantern to their feet	S2
Newton the first whose thought could soar beyond	S2
The bounds of human vision and declare	U
Thus saith the law of Nature and of God	S2
Concerning things invisible	X2
This new world	S2
What was it but one harmony the more	O3
In that great music which himself had heard	S2
The chant of those reintegrated spheres	A3
Moving around their sun while all things moved	S2
Around one deeper Light revealed by law	A3
Beyond all vision past all understanding	C3
Yet darkly shadowed forth for dreaming men	E
On earth in music	C3
Music all comes back	C3
To music in the end	S2
Then in the gloom	V
Of the Octagon Chapel the dreamer lifted up	R3
His face as if to all those great forebears	A3
The quivering organ rolled upon the dusk	C3
His dream of that new symphony the sun	E
Chanting to all his planets on their way	H2
While stop to stop replying height o'er height	S2
His planets answered voices of a dream	S3
	-
THE SUN	E
	-
Light on the far faint planets that attend me	S2
Light But for me the fury and the fire	F2
My white hot maelstroms the red storms that rend me	S2
Can yield them still the harvest they desire	F2
	-
I kiss with light their sunward lifted faces	A3
With dew drenched flowers I crown their dusky brows	A3
They praise me lightly from their pleasant places	A3
Their birds belaud me lightly from their boughs	A3
	-
And men on lute and lyre have breathed their pleasure	F2
They have watched Apollo's golden chariot roll	R2
Hymned his bright wheels but never mine that measure	F2
A million leagues of flame from Pole to Pole	R2
	-
Like harbour lights the stars grow wide before me	S2
I draw my worlds ten thousand leagues a day	H2
Their far blue seas like April eyes adore me	S2
They follow dreaming on my soundless way	H2
	-
How should they know who wheel around my burning	C3
What torments bore them or what power am I	C3
I that with all those worlds around me turning	C3
Sail every hour from sky to unplumbed sky	C3
	-
My planets these live embers of my passion	E
These children of my hurricanes of flame	T3
Flung thro' the night for midnight to refashion	E
Praise and forget the splendour whence they came	T3
	-
	-
THE EARTH	N3
	-
Was it a dream that in those bright dominions	A3
Are other worlds that sing with lives like mine	E
Lives that with beating hearts and broken pinions	A3
Aspire and fall half mortal half divine	E
	-
A grain of dust among those glittering legions	A3
Am I I only touched with joy and tears	A3
silver sisters from your azure regions	A3
Breathe once again your music of the spheres	A3
	-
	-
VENUS	A3
	-
A nearer sun a rose of light arises	A3
To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers	A3
To paint my clouds with ever new surprises	A3
And wreathe with mist my rosier domes and towers	A3
	-
Where now to praise their gods a throng assembles	A3
Whose hopes and dreams no sphere but mine has known	E
On other worlds the same warm sunlight trembles	A3
But life love worship these are mine alone	E
	-
	-
MARS	A3
	-
And now as dewdrops in the dawn light glisten	E
Remote and cold see Earth and Venus roll	R2
We signalled them in music Did they listen	E
Could they not hear those whispers of the soul	R2
	-
May not their flesh have sealed that fount of glory	S2
That pure ninth sense which told us of mankind	S2
Can some deep sleep bereave them of our story	S2
As darkness hides all colours from the blind	S2
	-
	-
JUPITER	F2
	-
I that am sailing deeper skies and dimmer	F2
Twelve million leagues beyond the path of Mars	A3
Salute the sun that cloudy pearl whose glimmer	F2
Renews my spring and steers me through the stars	A3
	-
Think not that I by distances am darkened	S2
My months are years yet light is in mine eyes	A3
Mine eyes are not as yours Mine ears have hearkened	S2
To sounds from earth Five moons enchant my skies	A3
	-
	-
SATURN	E
	-
And deeper yet like molten opal shining	C3
My belt of rainbow glory softly streams	A3
And seven white moons around me intertwining	C3
Hide my vast beauty in a mist of dreams	A3
	-
Huge is my orbit and your flickering planet	S2
A mote that flecks your sun that faint white star	B
Yet in my magic pools I still can scan it	S2
For I have ways to look on worlds afar	B
	-
	-
URANUS	A3
	-
And deeper yet twelve million leagues of twilight	S2
Divide mine empire even from Saturn's ken	E
Is there a world whose light is not as my light	S2
A midget world of light imprisoned men	E
	-
Shut from this inner vision that hath found me	S2
They hunt bright shadows painted to betray	H2
And know not that because their night hath drowned me	S2
My giants walk with gods in boundless day	H2
	-
	-
NEPTUNE	E
	-
Plunge through immensity anew and find me	S2
Though scarce I see your sun that dying spark	C3
Across a myriad leagues it still can bind me	S2
To my sure path and steer me through the dark	C3
	-
I sail through vastness and its rhythms hold me	S2
Though threescore earths could in my volume sleep	E3
Whose are the might and music that enfold me	S2
Whose is the law that guides me thro' the Deep	E3
	-
	-
THE SUN	E
	-
I hear their song They wheel around my burning	C3
I know their orbits but what path have I	C3
I that with all those worlds around me turning	C3
Sail every hour ten thousand leagues of sky	C3
	-
My planets these live embers of my passion	E
And I too filled with music and with flame	T3
Flung thro' the night for midnight to refashion	E
Praise and forget the Splendour whence we came	T3
	-
	-
	-
	-
EPILOGUE	C3
	-
	-
Once more upon the mountain's lonely height	S2
I woke and round me heard the sea like sound	S2
Of pine woods as the solemn night wind washed	S2
Through the long canyons and precipitous gorges	A3
Where coyotes moaned and eagles made their nest	S2
Once more far far below I saw the lights	A3
Of distant cities at the mountain's feet	S2
Clustered like constellations	A3
Over me like the dome of some strange shrine	E
Housing our great new weapon of the sky	C3
And moving on its axis like a moon	E
Glimmered the new Uraniborg	C3
Shadows passed	S2
Like monks between it and the low grey walls	A3
That lodged them like a fortress in the rocks	A3
Their monastery of thought	S2
A shadow neared me	S2
I heard once more an eager living voice	A3
	-
Year after year the slow sure records grow	M
I wish that old Copernicus could see	S2
How through his truth that once dispelled a dream	S3
Broke the false axle trees of heaven destroyed	S2
All central certainty in the universe	A3
And seemed to dwarf mankind the spirit of man	E
Laid hold on law that Jacob's ladder of light	S2
And mounting slowly surely step by step	U3
Entered into its kingdom and its power	F2
For just as Tycho's tables of the stars	A3
Within the bound of our own galaxy	S2
Led Kepler to the music of his laws	A3
So father and son the Herschels with their charts	A3
Of all those fire mists those faint nebulae	R2
Those hosts of drifting universes led	S2
Our new discoverers to yet mightier laws	A3
Enthroned above all worlds	A3
We have not found them	O
And yet only the intellectual fool	R2
Dreams in his heart that even his brain can tick	C3
In isolated measure a centre of law	R2
Amidst the whirl of universal chaos	A3
For law descends from law Though all the spheres	A3
Through all the abysmal depths of Space were blown	E
Like dust before a colder darker wind	S2
Than even Lucretius dreamed yet if one thought	S2
One gleam of law within the mind of man	E
Lighten our darkness there's a law beyond	S2
And even that tempest of destruction moves	A3
To a lighter music shatters its myriad worlds	A3
Only to gather them up as a shattered wave	D3
Is gathered again into a rhythmic sea	S2
Whose ebb and flow are but the pulse of Life	F
In its creative passion	E
The records grow	M
Unceasingly and each new grain of truth	I
Is packed like radium with whole worlds of light	S2
The eclipses timed in Babylon help us now	E
To clock that gradual quickening of the moon	E
Ten seconds in a century	S2
Who that wrote	S2
On those clay tablets could foresee his gift	S2
To future ages dreamed that the groping mind	S2
Dowered with so brief a life could ever range	V3
With that divine precision through the abyss	A3
Who when that good Dutch spectacle maker set	S2
Two lenses in a tube to read the time	I3
Upon the distant clock tower of his church	W3
Could dream of this our hundred inch that shows	A3
The snow upon the polar caps of Mars	A3
Whitening and darkening as the seasons change	V3
Or who could dream when Galileo watched	S2
His moons of Jupiter that from their eclipses	A3
And from that change in their appointed times	A3
Now late now early as the watching earth	N3
Farther or nearer on its orbit rolled	S2
The immeasurable speed of light at last	S2
Should be reduced to measure	F2
Could Newton dream	S3
When through his prism he broke the pure white shaft	S2
Into that rainbow band how men should gather	F2
And disentangle ray by delicate ray	H2
The colours of the stars not only those	A3
That burn in heaven but those that long since perished	S2
Those vanished suns that eyes can still behold	S2
The strange lost stars whose light still reaches earth	N3
Although they died ten thousand years ago	M
Here night by night the innumerable heavens	A3
Speak to an eye more sensitive than man's	A3
Write on the camera's delicate retina	E
A thousand messages lines of dark and bright	S2
That speak of elements unknown on earth	N3
How shall men doubt who thus can read the Book	C3
Of Judgment and transcend both Space and Time	I3
Analyse worlds that long since passed away	H2
And scan the future how shall they doubt His power	F2
From whom their power and all creation came	T3
	-
I think that when the second Herschel tried	S2
Those great hexameters in our English tongue	C3
A nobler shield than ever Achilles knew	E
Shone through the song and made his	A3
echoes live	X3
	-
There he depicted the earth and the canopied sky and the	E
sea waves	A3
There the unwearied sun and the full orbed moon in their courses	A3
All the configured stars that gem the circuit of heaven	E
Pleiads and Hyads were there and the giant force of Orion	E
There the revolving Bear which the Wain they call was ensculptured	S2
Circling on high and in all his courses regarding Orion	E
Sole of the starry train that descends not to bathe in the ocean	E
	-
A nobler shield for us a deeper sky	C3
But even to us who know how far away	H2
Those constellations burn the wonder bides	A3
That each vast sun can speed through the abyss	A3
Age after age more swiftly than an eagle	R2
Each on its different road alone like ours	A3
With its own satellites yet since Homer sang	C3
Their aspect has not altered All their flight	S2
Has not yet changed the old pattern of the Wain	E
The sword belt of Orion is not sundered	S2
Nor has one fugitive splendour broken yet	S2
From Cassiopeia's throne	E
A thousand years	A3
Are but as yesterday even unto these	A3
How shall men doubt His empery over time	I3
Whose dwelling is a deep so absolute	S2
That we can only find Him in our souls	A3
For there despite Copernicus each may find	S2
The centre of all things There He lives and reigns	A3
There infinite distance into nearness grows	A3
And infinite majesty stoops to dust again	E
All things in little infinite love in man	E
Oh beating wings descend to earth once more	O3
And hear reborn the desert singer's cry	C3
When I consider the heavens the work of Thy fingers	A3
The sun and the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained	S2
Though man be as dust I know Thou art mindful of him	Y3
And through Thy law Thy light still visiteth him	Y3

Alfred Noyes

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