Star on star,
System on system, myriad worlds on worlds,
Beyond the utmost reach of mortal ken,
Beyond the utmost flight of mortal dream,
Yet have mine eyes beheld the birth of all.
But whence I am I know not. We are three--
Known, yet unknown--unfathomable to man,
Time, Space, and Matter pregnant with all life,
Immortals older than the oldest orb.
We were and are forever: out of us
Are all things--suns and satellites, midge and man.
Worlds wax and wane, suns flame and glow and die;
Through shoreless space their scattered ashes float,
Unite, cohere, and wax to worlds again,
Changing, yet changless--new, but ever old--
No atom lost and not one atom gained,
Though fire to vapor melt the adamant,
Or feldspar fall in drops of summer rain.
And in the atoms sleep the germs of life,
Myriad and multiform and marvelous,
Throughout all vast, immeasurable space,
In every grain of dust, in every drop
Of water, waiting but the thermal touch.
Yea, in the womb of nature slumber still
Wonders undreamed and forms beyond compare,
Minds that will cleave the chaos and unwind
The web of fate, and from the atom trace
The worlds, the suns, the universal law:
And from the law, the Master; yea, and read
On yon grand starry scroll the Master's will.
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