Aleriel/Part 2/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
COPERNICUS.
FROM Ptolomæus I directed my car to the great ring of Copernicus, the rival of mighty Tycho. It was a vast plain of 56 miles diameter, walled in by ramparts, in rising terraces up to 12,000 feet. The peaks in succession glistened in the sunlight.
Then I turned westward from Copernicus to the huge chains of the lunar Apennines, which recalled to my mind, more than anything else I had seen since I had left Trehyndra, the memory of the mountains of the earth. Long lines of peaks with narrow gorges, with lines of awful precipices, such as you cannot imagine. Some of the peaks were as lofty as Mont Blanc. The scenery was magnificent and terrible.
From these peaks (on which I rested) I looked over the vast plains—those waterless seas of the moon—like what your Atlantic, or Pacific, or even North Sea, would be if the ocean was drained from them and only the sea-bottom left. **** The feeling of loneliness intensified and grew rapidly upon me as the dark shadows of these tremendous peaks in the setting sun, sharply defined in the absence of an atmosphere, gathered around me. The valleys long had been in darkness. Now peak after peak grew black; at last night closed around me, and the bright orb of day sank amid the mountains.
The black sky was now varied by a myriad glittering stars, amid which the great earth rolled with its oceans and continents partly defined through the clouds and mist, with which, in many places, it was enveloped. I looked for England, but I only saw the mist in which it was wrapt. Some parts of the earth, however, came out clearly, especially the regions of the tropics. At either pole, just as you see on Mars, there was a glittering mass of snow and ice shining white in the sunlight.
I looked and wondered, and then I turned to the desolate scene around me, dimly illumined by the earth-light, and then, as I felt my loneliness—alone, alone, in a dead world,—I knelt in awe and worshipped God.