"
My own tastes and studies have led me mainly in the direction of Natural
History and Archaeology; but if you love one science, you cannot but feel
intense interest in them all. How grand are the truths of Astronomy!
Prudhomme, in a sonnet beautifully translated by Arthur O'Shaugnessy, has
pictured an Observatory. He says--
"'Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height,
Exploring, all the dark, descries afar
Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are."
He notices a comet, and calculating its orbit, finds that it will return
in a thousand years--
"The star will come. It dare not by one hour
Cheat Science, or falsify her calculation;
Men will have passed, but, watchful in the tower,
Man shall remain in sleepless contemplation;
And should all men have perished in their turn,
Truth in their place would watch that star's return."
Ernest Rhys well says of a student's chamber--
"Strange things pass nightly in this little room,
All dreary as it looks by light of day;
Enchantment reigns here when at evening play
Red fire-light glimpses through the pallid gloom.
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