She cooed,
'Is Mr. Pepys within?' I greatly fear
That they denied you to her!"
Off ran Pepys!
"A hint's a hint," laughed Halley, "and so to bed.
But, as for Isaac Newton, let me say,
Whatever his embroilments were, he solved
With just one hour of thought, not long ago
The problem set by Leibnitz as a challenge
To all of Europe. He published his result
Anonymously, but Leibnitz, when he saw it,
Cried out, at once, old enemy as he was,
'That's Newton, none but Newton! From this claw
I know the old lion, in his midnight lair.'"
VI
(_Sir Isaac Newton writes to Mrs. Vincent at Woolthorpe._)
Your letter, on my eightieth birthday, wakes
Memories, like violets, in this London gloom.
You have never failed, for more than three-score years
To send these annual greetings from the haunts
Where you and I were boy and girl together.
A day must come-it cannot now be far--
When I shall have no power to thank you for them,
So let me tell you now that, all my life,
They have come to me with healing in their wings
Like birds from home, birds from the happy woods
Above the Witham, where you walked with me
When you and I were young.
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