POETRY
By
Arthur Quiller-Couch
"Trust in good verses then:
They only shall aspire,
When pyramids, as men
Are lost i'the funeral fire."
As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his Republic, oneEr the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten daysafterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body aloneshowed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off tothe funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned tolife and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders herelated concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards andpunishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle ofNecessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planetsrevolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet allconcentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctuallytogether.—"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rimof each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning asingle note; the eight notes together forming one harmony."
The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report nomore than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid hiswelter of guesswork about the Universe—that its stability rests onordered motion—that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of activeand tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "Bywhom?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "How?" Natural Science,allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itselfwith mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But allagree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of itfor us, he but makes our assurance surer.
For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knewof the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriouslyappointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularlywaxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, thegauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in thealmanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole.Says the son of Sirach concerning them—
At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order,
And they will not faint in their watches.
So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for itby what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience,supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortal