Poems Sigourney 1827/The Georgian Planet

by Lydia Sigourney

THE GEORGIAN PLANET.

Slow-moving Orb! majestic and remote,
Which Galileo's glass had fail'd to note,
Thou, who with swift-wing'd Mercury art given
To mark the grand antithesis of heaven,
Keep'st thou like armed sentinel the ground
Where rival systems press our solar round?
Read'st thou from them with ever sleepless eyes
What thy own zodiac's fainter page denies?
Or call'st thy six torch-bearers forth, to light
The guarded frontier through the watchful night,
Like border chieftain, whose strong castle towers,
The dreaded boundary of contiguous powers?
    Does the red Comet, in his hour of wrath,
Scorn thy dull movements and concentric path?
Or bear, replenish'd from some richer sphere,
Fuel and flame, thy shivering sons to cheer?

Touch with electric wand thy loosen'd reins,
And speed thy axle o'er the azure plains?
    While to the highest portal of the sky,*^[1]
Whose glowing threshold mocks the dazzled eye,
Thou journeyest onward through the fields of air,
Our earthborn infants grow to men of care;
And ere to Capricorn, its frigid goal,
Thy flambeaux-lighted car is seen to roll,
A few survive, with wasted locks, and gray,—
The rest have slumber'd long in kindred clay.
    Say,—do thy children thus, with scanty line,
Their seasons measure, and their graves define?
Or, like that race whom the dire deluge slew,
Through waning centuries their youth renew?
Content to hold, beneath a niggard ray,
Cold, passive, passionless, their lingering way?
Alas! how weak is reason's wildering chain!
How low we fall, from heights we seek to gain!
The lamp of Science, through the mists afar,
Fades like the sun upon the Georgian star;
We gaze and boast! yet scarce can turn about
Ere the brief hour-glass of our time is out!
We sink to rest, with those who went before,
Lost like the grains of sand on Ocean's boundless shore.

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1. * The ancient Egyptians used to call the sign Cancer, "the highest gate of Heaven."