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Newton

by Alfred Noyes

If I saw farther, 'twas because I stood

On giant shoulders," wrote the king of thought,

Too proud of his great line to slight the toils

Of his forebears. He turned to their dim past,

Their fading victories and their fond defeats,

And knelt as at an altar, drawing all

Their strengths into his own; and so went forth

With all their glory shining in his face,

To win new victories for the age to come.

So, where Copernicus had destroyed the dream

We called our world; where Galileo watched

Those ancient firmaments melt, a thin blue smoke

Into a vaster night; where Kepler heard

Only stray fragments, isolated chords

Of that tremendous music which should bind

All things anew in one, Newton arose

And carried on their fire.

Around him reeled

Through lingering fumes of hate and clouds of doubt,

Lit by the afterglow of the Civil War,

The dissolute throngs of that Walpurgis night

Where all the cynical spirits that deny

Danced with the vicious lusts that drown the soul

In flesh too gross for Circe or her swine.

But, in his heart, he heard one instant voice.

"On with the torch once more, make all things new,

Build the new heaven and earth, and save the world."

Ah, but the infinite patience, the long months

Lavished on tasks that, to the common eye,

Were insignificant, never to be crowned

With great results, or even with earth's rewards.

Could Rembrandt but have painted him, in those hours

Making his first analysis of light

Alone, there, in his darkened Cambridge room

At Trinity! Could he have painted, too,

The secret glow, the mystery, and the power,

The sense of all the thoughts and unseen spires

That soared to heaven around him!

He stood there,

Obscure, unknown, the shadow of a man

In darkness, like a grey dishevelled ghost,

--Bare-throated, down at heel, his last night's supper

Littering his desk, untouched; his glimmering face,

Under his tangled hair, intent and still,--

Preparing our new universe.

He caught

The sunbeam striking through that bullet-hole

In his closed shutter--a round white spot of light

Upon a small dark screen.

He interposed

A prism of glass. He saw the sunbeam break

And spread upon the screen its rainbow band

Of disentangled colours, all in scale

Like notes in music; first, the violet ray,

Then indigo, trembling softly into blue;

Then green and yellow, quivering side by side;

Then orange, mellowing richly into red.

Then, in the screen, he made a small, round hole

Like to the first; and through it passed once more

Each separate coloured ray. He let it strike

Another prism of glass, and saw each hue

Bent at a different angle from its path,

The red the least, the violet ray the most;

But all in scale and order, all precise

As notes in music. Last, he took a lens,

And, passing through it all those coloured rays,

Drew them together again, remerging all

On that dark screen, in one white spot of light.

So, watching, testing, proving, he resolved

The seeming random glories of our day

Into a constant harmony, and found

How in the whiteness of the sunlight sleep

Compounded, all the colours of the world.

He saw how raindrops in the clouds of heaven

Breaking the light, revealed that sevenfold arch

Of colours, ranged as on his own dark screen,

Though now they spanned the mountains and wild seas.

Then, where that old-world order had gone down

Beneath a darker deluge, he beheld

Gleams of the great new order and recalled

--Fraught with new meaning and a deeper hope--

That covenant which God made with all mankind

Throughout all generations: I will set

My bow in the cloud, that henceforth ye may know

How deeper than the wreckage of your dreams

Abides My law, in beauty and in power.

Yet for that exquisite balance of the mind,

He, too, must pay the price. He stood alone

Bewildered, at the sudden assault of fools

On this, his first discovery.

"I have lost

The most substantial blessing of my quiet

To follow a vain shadow.

I would fain

Attempt no more. So few can understand,

Or read one thought. So many are ready at once

To swoop and sting. Indeed I would withdraw

For ever from philosophy." So he wrote

In grief, the mightiest mind of that new age.

Let those who'd stone the Roman Curia

For all the griefs that Galileo knew

Remember the dark hours that well-nigh quenched

The splendour of that spirit. He could not sleep.

Yet, with that patience of the God in man

That still must seek the Splendour whence it came,

Through midnight hours of mockery and defeat,

In loneliness and hopelessness and tears,

He laboured on. He had no power to see

How, after many years, when he was dead,

Out of this new discovery men should make

An instrument to explore the farthest stars

And, delicately dividing their white rays,

Divine what metals in their beauty burned,

Extort red secrets from the heart of Mars,

Or measure the molten iron in the sun.

He bent himself to nearer, lowlier, tasks;

And seeing, first, that those deflected rays,

Though it were only by the faintest bloom

Of colour, imperceptible to our eyes,

Must dim the vision of Galileo's glass,

He made his own new weapon of the sky,--

That first reflecting telescope which should hold

In its deep mirror, as in a breathless pool

The undistorted image of a star.

III

In that deep night where Galileo groped

Like a blind giant in dreams to find what power

Held moons and planets to their constant road

Through vastness, ordered like a moving fleet;

What law so married them that they could not clash

Or sunder, but still kept their rhythmic pace

As if those ancient tales indeed were true

And some great angel helmed each gliding sphere;

Many had sought an answer. Many had caught

Gleams of the truth; and yet, as when a torch

Is waved above a multitude at night,

And shows wild streams of faces, all confused,

But not the single law that knits them all

Into an ordered nation, so our skies

For all those fragmentary glimpses, whirled

In chaos, till one eagle-spirit soared,

Found the one law that bound them all in one,

And through that awful unity upraised

The soul to That which made and guides them all.

Did Newton, dreaming in his orchard there

Beside the dreaming Witham, see the moon

Burn like a huge gold apple in the boughs

And wonder why should moons not fall like fruit?

Or did he see as those old tales declare

(Those fairy-tales that gather form and fire

Till, in one jewel, they pack the whole bright world)

A ripe fruit fall from some immortal tree

Of knowledge, while he wondered at what height

Would this earth-magnet lose its darkling power?

Would not the fruit fall earthward, though it grew

High o'er the hills as yonder brightening cloud?

Would not the selfsame power that plucked the fruit

Draw the white moon, then, sailing in the blue?

Then, in one flash, as light and song are born,

And the soul wakes, he saw it--this dark earth

Holding the moon that else would fly through space

To her sure orbit, as a stone is held

In a whirled sling; and, by the selfsame power,

Her sister planets guiding all their moons;

While, exquisitely balanced and controlled

In one vast system, moons and planets wheeled

Around one sovran majesty, the sun.

Light and more light! The spark from heaven was there,

The flash of that reintegrating fire

Flung from heaven's altars, where all light is born,

To feed the imagination of mankind

With vision, and reveal all worlds in one.

But let no dreamer dream that his great work

Sprang, armed, like Pallas from the Thunderer's brain.

With infinite patience he must test and prove

His vision now, in those clear courts of Truth

Whose absolute laws (bemocked by shallower minds

As less than dreams, less than the faithless faith

That fears the Truth, lest Truth should slay the dream)

Are man's one guide to his transcendent heaven;

For there's no wandering splendour in the soul,

But in the highest heaven of all is one

With absolute reality. None can climb

Back to that Fount of Beauty but through pain.

Long, long he toiled, comparing first the curves

Traced by the cannon-ball as it soared and fell

With that great curving road across the sky

Traced by the sailing moon.

Was earth a loadstone

Holding them to their paths by that dark force

Whose mystery men have cloaked beneath a name?

Yet, when he came to test and prove, he found

That all the great deflections of the moon,

Her shining cadences from the path direct,

Were utterly inharmonious with the law

Of that dark force, at such a distance acting,

Measured from earth's own centre....

For three long years, Newton withheld his hope

Until that day when light was brought from France,

New light, new hope, in one small glistening fact,

Clear-cut as any diamond; and to him

Loaded with all significance, like the point

Of light that shows where constellations burn.

Picard in France--all glory to her name

Who is herself a light among all lands--

Had measured earth's diameter once more

With exquisite precision.

To the throng,

Those few corrected ciphers, his results,

Were less than nothing; yet they changed the world.

For Newton seized them and, with trembling hands,

Began to work his problem out anew.

Then, then, as on the page those figures turned

To hieroglyphs of heaven, and he beheld

The moving moon, with awful cadences

Falling into the path his law ordained,

Even to the foot and second, his hand shook

And dropped the pencil.

"Work it out for me,"

He cried to those around him; for the weight

Of that celestial music overwhelmed him;

And, on his page, those burning hieroglyphs

Were Thrones and Principalities and Powers...

For far beyond, immeasurably far

Beyond our sun, he saw that river of suns

We call the Milky Way, that glittering host

Powdering the night, each grain of solar blaze

Divided from its neighbour by a gulf

Too wide for thought to measure; each a sun

Huger than ours, with its own fleet of worlds,

Visible and invisible. Those bright throngs

That seemed dispersed like a defeated host

Through blindly wandering skies, now, at the word

Of one great dreamer, height o'er height revealed

Hints of a vaster order, and moved on

In boundless intricacies of harmony

Around one centre, deeper than all suns,

The burning throne of God.

He could not sleep. That intellect, whose wings

Dared the cold ultimate heights of Space and Time

Sank, like a wounded eagle, with dazed eyes

Back, headlong through the clouds to throb on earth.

What shaft had pierced him? That which also pierced

His great forebears--the hate of little men.

They flocked around him, and they flung their dust

Into the sensitive eyes and laughed to see

How dust could blind them.

If one prickling grain

Could so put out his vision and so torment

That delicate brain, what weakness! How the mind

That seemed to dwarf us, dwindles! Is he mad?

So buzzed the fools, whose ponderous mental wheels

Nor dust, nor grit, nor stones, nor rocks could irk

Even for an instant.

Newton could not sleep,

But all that careful malice could design

Was blindly fostered by well-meaning folly,

And great sane folk like Mr. Samuel Pepys

Canvassed his weakness and slept sound all night.

For little Samuel with his rosy face

Came chirping into a coffee-house one day

Like a plump robin, "Sir, the unhappy state

Of Mr. Isaac Newton grieves me much.

Last week I had a letter from him, filled

With strange complainings, very curious hints,

Such as, I grieve to say, are common signs

--I have observed it often--of worse to come.

He said that he could neither eat nor sleep

Because of all the embroilments he was in,

Hinting at nameless enemies. Then he begged

My pardon, very strangely. I believe

Physicians would confirm me in my fears.

'Tis very sad.... Only last night, I found

Among my papers certain lines composed

By--whom d'you think?--My lord of Halifax

(Or so dear Mrs. Porterhouse assured me)

Expressing, sir, the uttermost satisfaction

In Mr. Newton's talent. Sir, he wrote

Answering the charge that science would put out

The light of beauty, these very handsome lines:

'When Newton walked by Witham stream

There fell no chilling shade

To blight the drifting naiad's dream

Or make her garland fade.

The mist of sun was not less bright

That crowned Urania's hair.

He robbed it of its colder light,

But left the rainbow there.'

They are very neat and handsome, you'll agree.

Solid in sense as Dryden at his best,

And smooth as Waller, but with something more,--

That touch of grace, that airier elegance

Which only rank can give.

'Tis very sad

That one so nobly praised should--well, no matter!--

I am told, sir, that these troubles all began

At Cambridge, when his manuscripts were burned.

He had been working, in his curious way,

All through the night; and, in the morning greyness

Went down to chapel, leaving on his desk

A lighted candle. You can imagine it,--

A sadly sloven altar to his Muse,

Littered with papers, cups, and greasy plates

Of untouched food. I am told that he would eat

His Monday's breakfast, sir, on Tuesday morning,

Such was his absent way!

When he returned,

He found that Diamond (his little dog

Named Diamond, for a black patch near his tail)

Had overturned the candle. All his work

Was burned to ashes.

It struck him to the quick,

Though, when his terrier fawned about his feet,

He showed no anger. He was heard to say,

'O Diamond, Diamond, little do you know...'

But, from that hour, ah well, we'll say no more."

Halley was there that day, and spoke up sharply,

"Sir, there are hints and hints! Do you mean more?"

--"I do, sir," chirruped Samuel, mightily pleased

To find all eyes, for once, on his fat face.

"I fear his intellects are disordered, sir."

--"Good! That's an answer! I can deal with that.

But tell me first," quoth Halley, "why he wrote

That letter, a week ago, to Mr. Pepys."

--"Why, sir," piped Samuel, innocent of the trap,

"I had an argument in this coffee-house

Last week, with certain gentlemen, on the laws

Of chance, and what fair hopes a man might have

Of throwing six at dice. I happened to say

That Mr. Isaac Newton was my friend,

And promised I would sound him."

"Sir," said Halley,

"You'll pardon me, but I forgot to tell you

I heard, a minute since, outside these doors,

A very modish woman of the town,

Or else a most delicious lady of fashion,

A melting creature with a bold black eye,

A bosom like twin doves; and, sir, a mouth

Like a Turk's dream of Paradise. She cooed,

'Is Mr. Pepys within?' I greatly fear

That they denied you to her!"

Off ran Pepys!

"A hint's a hint," laughed Halley, "and so to bed.

But, as for Isaac Newton, let me say,

Whatever his embroilments were, he solved

With just one hour of thought, not long ago

The problem set by Leibnitz as a challenge

To all of Europe. He published his result

Anonymously, but Leibnitz, when he saw it,

Cried out, at once, old enemy as he was,

'That's Newton, none but Newton! From this claw

I know the old lion, in his midnight lair.'"

(Sir Isaac Newton writes to Mrs. Vincent at Woolthorpe.)

Your letter, on my eightieth birthday, wakes

Memories, like violets, in this London gloom.

You have never failed, for more than three-score years

To send these annual greetings from the haunts

Where you and I were boy and girl together.

A day must come-it cannot now be far--

When I shall have no power to thank you for them,

So let me tell you now that, all my life,

They have come to me with healing in their wings

Like birds from home, birds from the happy woods

Above the Witham, where you walked with me

When you and I were young.

Do you remember

Old Barley--how he tried to teach us drawing?

He found some promise, I believe, in you,

But quite despaired of me.

I treasure all

Those little sketches that you sent to me

Each Christmas, carrying each some glimpse of home.

There's one I love that shows the narrow lane

Behind the schoolhouse, where I had that bout

Of schoolboy fisticuffs. I have never known

More pleasure, I believe, than when I beat

That black-haired bully and won, for my reward,

Those April smiles from you.

I see you still

Standing among the fox-gloves in the hedge;

And just behind you, in the field, I know

There was a patch of aromatic flowers,--

Rest-harrow, was it? Yes; their tangled roots

Pluck at the harrow; halt the sharp harrow of thought,

Even in old age. I never breathe their scent

But I am back in boyhood, dreaming there

Over some book, among the diligent bees,

Until you join me, and we dream together.

They called me lazy, then. Oddly enough

It was that fight that stirred my mind to beat

My bully at his books, and head the school;

Blind rivalry, at first. By such fond tricks

The invisible Power that shapes us--not ourselves--

Punishes, teaches, leads us gently on

Like children, all our lives, until we grasp

A sudden meaning and are born, through death

Into full knowledge that our Guide was Love.

Another picture shows those woods of ours,

Around whose warm dark edges in the spring

Primroses, knots of living sunlight, woke;

And, always, you, their radiant shepherdess

From Elfland, lead them rambling back for me,

The dew still clinging to their golden fleece,

Through these grey memory-mists.

Another shows

My old sun-dial. You say that it is known

As "Isaac's dial" still. I took great pains

To set it rightly. If it has not shifted

'Twill mark the time long after I am gone;

Not like those curious water-clocks I made.

Do you remember? They worked well at first;

But the least particles in the water clogged

The holes through which it dripped; and so, one day,

We two came home so late that we were sent

Supperless to our beds; and suffered much

From the world's harshness, as we thought it then.

Would God that we might taste that harshness now.

I cannot send you what you've sent to me;

And so I wish you'll never thank me more

For those poor gifts I have sent from year to year.

I send another, and hope that you can use it

To buy yourself those comforts which you need

This Christmas-time.

How strange it is to wake

And find that half a century has gone by,

With all our endless youth.

They talk to me

Of my discoveries, prate of undying fame

Too late to help me. Anything I achieved

Was done through work and patience; and the men

Who sought quick roads to glory for themselves

Were capable of neither. So I won

Their hatred, and it often hampered me,

Because it vexed my mind.

This world of ours

Would give me all, now I have ceased to want it;

For I sit here, alone, a sad old man,

Sipping his orange-water, nodding to sleep,

Not caring any more for aught they say,

Not caring any more for praise or blame;

But dreaming-things we dreamed of, long ago,

In childhood.

You and I had laughed away

That boy and girl affair. We were too poor

For anything but laughter.

I am old;

And you, twice wedded and twice widowed, still

Retain, through all your nearer joys and griefs,

The old affection. Vaguely our blind old hands

Grope for each other in this growing dark

And deepening loneliness,--to say "good-bye."

Would that my words could tell you all my heart;

But even my words grow old.

Perhaps these lines,

Written not long ago, may tell you more.

I have no skill in verse, despite the praise

Your kindness gave me, once; but since I wrote

Thinking of you, among the woods of home,

My heart was in them. Let them turn to yours:

Give me, for friends, my own true folk

Who kept the very word they spoke;

Whose quiet prayers, from day to day,

Have brought the heavens about my way.

Not those whose intellectual pride

Would quench the only lights that guide;

Confuse the lines 'twixt good and ill

Then throne their own capricious will;

Not those whose eyes in mockery scan

The simpler hopes and dreams of man;

Not those keen wits, so quick to hurt,

So swift to trip you in the dirt.

Not those who'd pluck your mystery out,

Yet never saw your last redoubt;

Whose cleverness would kill the song

Dead at your heart, then prove you wrong.

Give me those eyes I used to know

Where thoughts like angels come and go;

--Not glittering eyes, nor dimmed by books,

But eyes through which the deep soul looks.

Give me the quiet hands and face

That never strove for fame and place;

The soul whose love, so many a day

Has brought the heavens about my way.

VII

Was it a dream, that low dim-lighted room

With that dark periwigged phantom of Dean Swift

Writing, beside a fire, to one he loved,--

Beautiful Catherine Barton, once the light

Of Newton's house, and his half-sister's child?

Yes, Catherine Barton, I am brave enough

To face this pale, unhappy, wistful ghost

Of our departed friendship.

It was I

Savage and mad, a snarling kennel of sins,

"Your Holiness," as you called me, with that smile

Which even your ghost would quietly turn on me--

Who raised it up. It has no terrors, dear.

And I shall never lay it while I live.

You write to me. You think I have the power

To shield the fame of Newton from a lie.

Poor little ghost! You think I hold the keys

Not only of Parnassus, then, but hell.

There is a tale abroad that Newton owed

His public office to Lord Halifax,

Your secret lover. Coarseness, as you know,

Is my peculiar privilege. I'll be plain,

And let them wince who are whispering in the dark.

They are hinting that he gained his public post

Through you, his flesh and blood; and that he knew

You were his patron's mistress!

Yes, I know

The coffee-house that hatched it--to be scotched,

Nay, killed, before one snuff-box could say "snap,"

Had not one cold malevolent face been there

Listening,--that crystal-minded lover of truth,

That lucid enemy of all lies,--Voltaire.

I am told he is doing much to spread the light

Of Newton's great discoveries, there, in France.

There's little fear that France, whose clear keen eyes

Have missed no morning in the realm of thought,

Would fail to see it; and smaller need to lift

A brand from hell to illume the light from heaven.

You fear he'll print his lie. No doubt of that.

I can foresee the phrase, as Halley saw

The advent of his comet,--jolie niece,

Assez amiable, ... then he'll give your name

As Madame Conduit, adding just that spice

Of infidelity that the dates admit

To none but these truth-lovers. It will be best

Not to enlighten him, or he'll change his tale

And make an answer difficult. Let him print

This truth as he conceives it, and you'll need

No more defence.

All history then shall damn his death-cold lie

And show you for the laughing child you were

When Newton won his office.

For yourself

You say you have no fear. Your only thought

Is that they'll soil his fame. Ah yes, they'll try,

But they'll not hurt it. For all time to come

It stands there, firm as marble and as pure.

They can do nothing that the sun and rain

Will not erase at last. Not even Voltaire

Can hurt that noble memory. Think of him

As of a viper writhing at the base

Of some great statue. Let the venomous tongue

Flicker against that marble as it may

It cannot wound it.

I am far more grieved

For you, who sit there wondering now, too late,

If it were some suspicion, some dark hint

Newton had heard that robbed him of his sleep,

And almost broke his mind up. I recall

How the town buzzed that Newton had gone mad.

You copy me that sad letter which he wrote

To Locke, wherein he begs him to forgive

The hard words he had spoken, thinking Locke

Had tried to embroil him, as he says, with women;

A piteous, humble letter.

Had he heard

Some hint of scandal that he could not breathe

To you, because he honoured you too well?

I cannot tell. His mind was greatly troubled

With other things. At least, you need not fear

That Newton thought it true. He walked aloof,

Treading a deeper stranger world than ours.

Have you not told me how he would forget

Even to eat and drink, when he was wrapt

In those miraculous new discoveries

And, under this wild maze of shadow and sun

Beheld--though not the Master Player's hand--

The keys from which His organ music rolls,

Those visible symphonies of wild cloud and light

Which clothe the invisible world for mortal eyes.

I have heard that Leibnitz whispered to the court

That Newton was an "atheist." Leibnitz knew

His audience. He could stoop to it.

Fools have said

That knowledge drives out wonder from the world;

They'll say it still, though all the dust's ablaze

With miracles at their feet; while Newton's laws

Foretell that knowledge one day shall be song,

And those whom Truth has taken to her heart

Find that it beats in music.

Even this age

Has glimmerings of it. Newton never saw

His own full victory; but at least he knew

That all the world was linked in one again;

And, if men found new worlds in years to come,

These too must join the universal song.

That's why true poets love him; and you'll find

Their love will cancel all that hate can do.

They are the sentinels of the House of Fame;

And that quick challenging couplet from the pen

Of Alexander Pope is answer enough

To all those whisperers round the outer doors.

There's Addison, too. The very spirit and thought

Of Newton moved to music when he wrote

The Spacious Firmament. Some keen-eyed age to come

Will say, though Newton seldom wrote a verse,

That music was his own and speaks his faith.

And, last, for those who doubt his faith in God

And man's immortal destiny, there remains

The granite monument of his own great work,

That dark cathedral of man's intellect,

The vast "Principia," pointing to the skies,

Wherein our intellectual king proclaimed

The task of science,--through this wilderness

Of Time and Space and false appearances,

To make the path straight from effect to cause,

Until we come to that First Cause of all,

The Power, above, beyond the blind machine,

The Primal Power, the originating Power,

Which cannot be mechanical. He affirmed it

With absolute certainty. Whence arises all

This order, this unbroken chain of law,

This human will, this death-defying love?

Whence, but from some divine transcendent Power,

Not less, but infinitely more than these,

Because it is their Fountain and their Guide.

Fools in their hearts have said, "Whence comes this Power,

Why throw the riddle back this one stage more?"

And Newton, from a height above all worlds

Answered and answers still:

"This universe

Exists, and by that one impossible fact

Declares itself a miracle; postulates

An infinite Power within itself, a Whole

Greater than any part, a Unity

Sustaining all, binding all worlds in one.

This is the mystery, palpable here and now.

'Tis not the lack of links within the chain

From cause to cause, but that the chain exists.

That's the unfathomable mystery,

The one unquestioned miracle that we know,

Implying every attribute of God,

The ultimate, absolute, omnipresent Power,

In its own being, deep and high as heaven.

But men still trace the greater to the less,

Account for soul with flesh and dreams with dust,

Forgetting in their manifold world the One,

In whom for every splendour shining here

Abides an equal power behind the veil.

Was the eye contrived by blindly moving atoms,

Or the still-listening ear fulfilled with music

By forces without knowledge of sweet sounds?

Are nerves and brain so sensitively fashioned

That they convey these pictures of the world

Into the very substance of our life,

While That from which we came, the Power that made us,

Is drowned in blank unconsciousness of all?

Does it not from the things we know appear

That there exists a Being, incorporeal,

Living, intelligent, who in infinite space,

As in His infinite sensory, perceives

Things in themselves, by His immediate presence

Everywhere? Of which things, we see no more

Than images only, flashed through nerves and brain

To our small sensories?

What is all science then

But pure religion, seeking everywhere

The true commandments, and through many forms

The eternal power that binds all worlds in one?

It is man's age-long struggle to draw near

His Maker, learn His thoughts, discern His law,--

A boundless task, in whose infinitude,

As in the unfolding light and law of love.

Abides our hope, and our eternal joy.

I know not how my work may seem to others--"

So wrote our mightiest mind--"But to myself

I seem a child that wandering all day long

Upon the sea-shore, gathers here a shell,

And there a pebble, coloured by the wave,

While the great ocean of truth, from sky to sky

Stretches before him, boundless, unexplored."

He has explored it now, and needs of me

Neither defence nor tribute. His own work

Remains his monument He rose at last so near

The Power divine that none can nearer go;

None in this age! To carry on his fire

We must await a mightier age to come.