Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/204

That estrangeth wide apart
Science from her sister Art.
Hold ! look through this glass for me ?
Artist, tell me what you see ? " " I ! " cried Ralph. " I see in place
Of Astarte s silver face,
Or veiled Isis radiant robe,
Nothing but a rugged globe
Seamed with awful rents and scars.
And below no longer Mars,
Fierce, flame-crested god of war,
But a lurid, flickering star,
Fashioned like our mother earth,
Vexed, belike, with death and birth."

Rapt in dreamy thought the while,
With a sphinx-like shadowy smile,
Poet Florio sat, but now
Spake in deep-voiced accents slow,
More as one who probes his mind,
Than for us " Who seeks, shall find-
Widening knowledge surely brings
Vaster themes to him who sings.
Was veiled Isis more sublime
Than yon frozen fruit of Time,
Hanging in the naked sky ?
Death s domain for worlds too die.
Lo ! the heavens like a scroll
Stand revealed before my soul ;
And the hieroglyphs are suns