The Cosmos [pp. 71-72]

THE COSMOS.
The morning stars sang together. Job.
The mountains skipped like rams and the little
hills like lambs. Let the earth be glad. Let the
floods clap their hands.-Psalms.
ALL, all is still,'t is now the noon of night,
The infant moon has gone beyond the sea;
The earth's asleep, yet in her wondrous might
She rolls without a jar, a living entity;
Who will not say she is a conscious thing,
As conscious of her power as mightiest king?
The open firmament, an inverted bowl,
Securely rests upon the horizon's rim;
The Milky Way, a vast unfolded scroll,
Sheds sober light until morn's twilight dim,
And then the conquering sun, the dark deep blue
Dilutes to gentler shade and milder hue.
The ambitious moon, with each returning day,
Audacious grown, lags slow behind her sire,
Nor wills he aught her retrogression stay,
Until below the west is lost his fire,
Then rounded full, she, sovereign queen of night,
Bathes lands and oceans wide in clear silvery light.
The burning stars that grace earth's canopy,
Benignly look on wastes and fertile plains,
A brilliant host, encamped in fields on high,
Praise Him in anthems full in deep harmonious strains,
Him, who from chaos and Stygian night's abyss,
Called them to life, a life of consciousness.
Do not the sun and stars, planets and moons -all
Live and remember well of aeons, old
Of nature's throes, when from night's dismal pall,
Light rescued earth, and for the icy cold
Of winter drear, did substitute the day
Of genial warmth and growth as darkness passed away?
Aye, they remember all how the destroying flood,
Ere the unfathomed deluge had retired,
Engulfed the world and all the unrighteous brood,
Who against God had impiously conspired;
How rode the Ark the storm — then safely sat,
Securely moored aloft Mount Ararat.
Witnesses they were to Israel's exodus,
When flushed with hope across the sea they fled,
Escaped from bondage, dark as Erebus,
Onward they journeyed by their great Captain led:
From Pisgah's top't was granted him to see
The Promised Land, the goal of Israel, free.