There have been compensations. I have seen
In darkness, more perhaps than eyes can see
When sunlight blinds them on the mountain-tops;
Guessed at a glory past our mortal range,
And only mine because the night was mine.
Of those three systems of the universe,
The Ptolemaic, held by all the schools,
May yet be proven false. We yet may find
This earth of ours is not the sovran lord
Of all those wheeling spheres. Ourselves have marked
Movements among the planets that forbid
Acceptance of it wholly. Some of these
Are moving round the sun, if we can trust
Our years of watching. There are stranger dreams.
This radical, Copernicus, the priest,
Of whom I often talked with you, declares
Ail of these movements can be reconciled,
If--a hypothesis only--we should take
The sun itself for centre, and assume
That this huge earth, so 'stablished, so secure
In its foundations, is a planet also,
And moves around the sun.
I cannot think it.
This leap of thought is yet too great for me.
I have no doubt that Ptolemy was wrong.
Some of his planets move around the sun.
Copernicus is nearer to the truth
In some things.
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