Stella Flammarum: An Ode to Halley's Comet

1     Strange wanderer out of the deeps,
2     Whence, journeying, come you?
3     From what far, unsunned sleeps
4     Did fate foredoom you,
5     Returning for ever again
6     Through the surgings of man,
7     A flaming, awesome portent of dread
8     Down the centuries' span?

9     Riddle! from the dark unwrung
10   By all earth's sages;--
11   God's fiery torch from His hand outflung,
12   To flame through the ages:
13   Thou Satan of planets eterne,
14   'Mid angry path,
15   Chained, in circlings vast, to burn
16   Out ancient wrath.

17   By what dread hand first loosed
18   From fires eternal?
19   With majesties dire infused
20   Of force supernal,
21   Takest thy headlong way
22   O'er the highways of space?
23   O wonderful, blossoming flower of fear
24   On the sky's far face!

25   What secret of destiny's will
26   In thy wild burning?
27   What portent dire of humanity's ill
28   In thy returning?
29   Or art thou brand of love
30   In masking of bale?
31   And bringest thou ever some mystical surcease
32   For all who wail?

33   Perchance, O Visitor dread,
34   Thou hast thine appointed
35   Task, thou bolt of the vast outsped!
36   With God's anointed,
37   Performest some endless toil
38   In the universe wide,
39   Feeding or curing some infinite need
40   Where the vast worlds ride.

41   Once, only once, thy face
42   Will I view in this breathing;
43   Just for a space thy majesty trace
44   'Mid earth's mad seething;
45   Ere I go hence to my place,
46   As thou to thy deeps,
47   Thou flambent core of a universe dread,
48   Where all else sleeps.

49   But thou and man's spirit are one,
50   Thou poet! thou flaming
51   Soul of the dauntless sun,
52   Past all reclaiming!
53   One in that red unrest,
54   That yearning, that surge,
55   That mounting surf of the infinite dream,
56   O'er eternity's verge.