Even this age
Has glimmerings of it. Newton never saw
His own full victory; but at least he knew
That all the world was linked in one again;
And, if men found new worlds in years to come,
These too must join the universal song.
That's why true poets love him; and you'll find
Their love will cancel all that hate can do.
They are the sentinels of the House of Fame;
And that quick challenging couplet from the pen
Of Alexander Pope is answer enough
To all those whisperers round the outer doors.
There's Addison, too. The very spirit and thought
Of Newton moved to music when he wrote
_The Spacious Firmament_. Some keen-eyed age to come
Will say, though Newton seldom wrote a verse,
That music was his own and speaks his faith.
And, last, for those who doubt his faith in God
And man's immortal destiny, there remains
The granite monument of his own great work,
That dark cathedral of man's intellect,
The vast "Principia," pointing to the skies,
Wherein our intellectual king proclaimed
The task of science,--through this wilderness
Of Time and Space and false appearances,
To make the path straight from effect to cause,
Until we come to that First Cause of all,
The Power, above, beyond the blind machine,
The Primal Power, the originating Power,
Which cannot be mechanical.
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