Gala-Days [4]
poor men come, and their gold shines through their rags. Hither comes the poet, and the house is too narrow for their thoughts, and the rough walls ring with lusty laughter. O happy Walden wood and woodland lake, did you thrill through all your luminous aisles and all your listening shores for the man that wandered there?
Is it begun? Not yet. The kitchen clock has but just struck eleven, and my watch lacks ten minutes of that. What if the astronomers made a mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs are wrong, and the eclipse shall not come off? Would it be strange? Would it not be stranger if it were not so? How can a being, standing on one little ball, spinning forever around and around among millions of other balls larger and smaller, breathlessly the same endless waltz,--how can he trace out their paths, and foretell their conjunctions? How can a puny creature fastened down to one world, able to lift himself but a few paltry feet above, to dig but a few paltry feet below its surface, utterly unable to divine what shall happen to himself in the next moment,--how can he thrust out his hand into inconceivable space, and anticipate the silent future? How can his feeble eye detect the quiver of a world? How can his slender strength weigh the mountains in scales, and the bills in a balance? And yet it is. Wonderful is the Power that framed all these spheres, and sent them on their great errands; but more wonderful still the Power that gave to finite mind its power, to stand on one little point, and sweep the whole circle of the skies. Almost as marvelous is it that man, being man, can divine the universe, as that God, being God, could devise it. Cycles of years go by. Suns and moons and stars tread their mysterious rounds, but steady eyes are following them into the awful distances, steady hands are marking their eternal courses. Their multiplied motions shall yet be resolved into harmony, and so the music of the spheres shall chime with the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest!"
Is it begun? Not yet.
No wonder that eclipses were a terror to men before Science came queening it through the universe, compelling all these fearful sights and great signs into her triumphal train, and commanding us to be no longer afraid of our own shadow. The sure and steadfast Moon, shuddering from the fullness of her splendor into wild and ghostly darkness, might well wake strange apprehensions. She is reeling in convulsive agony. She is sickening and swooning in the death-struggle. The principalities and powers of darkness, the eternal foes of men, are working their baleful spell with success to cast the sweet Moon from her path, and force her to work woe and disaster upon the earth. Some fell monster, roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he may devour,--some dragon, "monstrous, horrible, and waste," whom no Redcrosse Knight shall pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing with giant gulps the writhing victim. Blow shrill and loud your bugle blasts! Beat with fierce clangor your brazen cymbals! Push up wild shrieks and groans, and horrid cries,
"That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring,"
and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by deafening din.
O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls were disinherited; for whom the woods and waters, and the deep places, were peopled with mighty, mysterious foes; who saw evil spirits in the earth forces, and turned her gold into consuming fire. For us, later born, Science has dived into the caverns, and scaled the heights, and fathomed the depths, forcing from coy yet willing Nature the solution of her own problems, and showing us everywhere, GOD. We are not children of fate, trembling at the frown of fairies and witches and gnomes, but the children of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he is there. If we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall his hand lead, and his right hand hold.
Is it begun? Not--well, I don't know, though. Something seems to be happening
Is it begun? Not yet. The kitchen clock has but just struck eleven, and my watch lacks ten minutes of that. What if the astronomers made a mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs are wrong, and the eclipse shall not come off? Would it be strange? Would it not be stranger if it were not so? How can a being, standing on one little ball, spinning forever around and around among millions of other balls larger and smaller, breathlessly the same endless waltz,--how can he trace out their paths, and foretell their conjunctions? How can a puny creature fastened down to one world, able to lift himself but a few paltry feet above, to dig but a few paltry feet below its surface, utterly unable to divine what shall happen to himself in the next moment,--how can he thrust out his hand into inconceivable space, and anticipate the silent future? How can his feeble eye detect the quiver of a world? How can his slender strength weigh the mountains in scales, and the bills in a balance? And yet it is. Wonderful is the Power that framed all these spheres, and sent them on their great errands; but more wonderful still the Power that gave to finite mind its power, to stand on one little point, and sweep the whole circle of the skies. Almost as marvelous is it that man, being man, can divine the universe, as that God, being God, could devise it. Cycles of years go by. Suns and moons and stars tread their mysterious rounds, but steady eyes are following them into the awful distances, steady hands are marking their eternal courses. Their multiplied motions shall yet be resolved into harmony, and so the music of the spheres shall chime with the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest!"
Is it begun? Not yet.
No wonder that eclipses were a terror to men before Science came queening it through the universe, compelling all these fearful sights and great signs into her triumphal train, and commanding us to be no longer afraid of our own shadow. The sure and steadfast Moon, shuddering from the fullness of her splendor into wild and ghostly darkness, might well wake strange apprehensions. She is reeling in convulsive agony. She is sickening and swooning in the death-struggle. The principalities and powers of darkness, the eternal foes of men, are working their baleful spell with success to cast the sweet Moon from her path, and force her to work woe and disaster upon the earth. Some fell monster, roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he may devour,--some dragon, "monstrous, horrible, and waste," whom no Redcrosse Knight shall pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing with giant gulps the writhing victim. Blow shrill and loud your bugle blasts! Beat with fierce clangor your brazen cymbals! Push up wild shrieks and groans, and horrid cries,
"That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring,"
and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by deafening din.
O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls were disinherited; for whom the woods and waters, and the deep places, were peopled with mighty, mysterious foes; who saw evil spirits in the earth forces, and turned her gold into consuming fire. For us, later born, Science has dived into the caverns, and scaled the heights, and fathomed the depths, forcing from coy yet willing Nature the solution of her own problems, and showing us everywhere, GOD. We are not children of fate, trembling at the frown of fairies and witches and gnomes, but the children of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he is there. If we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall his hand lead, and his right hand hold.
Is it begun? Not--well, I don't know, though. Something seems to be happening