Swift circuit-rider of the endless skies,
Thou wanderer of the outer, unknown air,
Amid those dim, uncharted regions there,
Imagination droops—in deep surprise
Man doth behold thee, and the fearful speed
At which thou spurrest on thy flaming steed.

Born of the dark and ever-deepening Past,
Who nurs'd thee there in yonder viewless space
Afar from earth—thy all-beholding face
Hath gazed unspeakable, with clear eye cast
Worldward on each magnificent return
As if of human progress thou wouldst learn.

And thou hast seen each triumph and each plan
By which the human race since human time
Hath learned at last Earth's secrets all-sublime
While rising from the elements to man—
Hast seen it triumph over sea and air
And universal knowledge hope to share.

Thy circuit measures well the age of man,
The epoch of a life—and few there be
Who seeing thee, thy face again may see,
For human life is but a little span,
With varying cycles of a different day,
And in diffusion wears itself away.

Child of the Sun, when first the human eye
Beheld thee coursing in the night afar
Like an illumined spectre of a star—
Beheld thy awful form against the sky
Strong men fell earthward with a coward-cry
On their pale lips, as if afraid to die—

And that brute King—Nero, the cruel King,
When looking on thy fiery face unknown,
Sate trembling on his little human throne,
And thought that thou didst evil tidings bring—
That thou wert writing on the distant skies
A doom from which no human king could rise.

Thy age is all unknown—man can but guess
The time when first the Sun thy circle set—
He can but guess thy secret birth—and yet
Observing thee his knowledge is not less;
He knows each cycle, each return to be
A moment in that vast eternity.

Recording-comet of th' immortal space,
What history thy eye hath look'd upon
Since first thy airy, circling course was run!
What fallen pride! What scatterings of race!
Jerusalem and Nineveh and Rome
Didst thou behold from thy almighty dome—

Didst thou behold—their birth, their rise, their fall—
Low humbled by the under hordes at last,
With glory and fair triumphs in the past,
And footprints of destruction over all.
While thou, fleet comet, with a light divine
Continueth upon the earth to shine.

Speed on! swift comet—turn, wanderer, turn!
And with thy flaming, god-like pen of light
On heaven's scroll with burning letters write:
Live but to love, O earth!—to love and learn,
For while a comet's mighty cycles fail,
Love,—love and truth forever shall prevail.

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