A BIT OF ROCK 41 



This all too delicate speck of earthen mould, 



And scan its other face with that same power 



Which makes me smaller. Now am I become 



Once more a speck myself, and that which was 



To me a speck again becomes a world 



Wherein I wander worshipping and lost — 



A region unsurvey'd, unmapp'd, unknown 



Till I, the king on't, with a pigmy rule 



Measure its hills and valleys, and essay 



What leagues it stretches here against the North, 



Or to the South as here. See yonder peak 



That seems to burn with fire, its crystal walls 



Inflamed with light, its top all tipp'd with gold, 



And, half-way down, those caverns in its side 



Gleaming with red. Tis sunrise on the hills, 



While in the vales the darkness sleepeth still. 



Nor can I cease to marvel though I know 



The sun is but a lamp which I have placed 



A foot away; nay, though I know its beam 



Is under my control — to wax, to wane, 



To rise, to set, to throw a shadow far 



As in the Arctic, or with tropic aim 



To burn o'erhead and bring the shade to nought. 



See now, the shadows move. The morning grows 



In yonder pass, revealing by their gleam 



Huge slabs of mica in the sandstone rocks : 



'Tis light now in the valleys : here 'tis noon, 



And here I rest awhile to scan the work 



Of ancient rivers : these have brought the lime 



Down from the mountains in a bygone age 



To fill their channels : veins of limestone now 



In sinuous paths meander through the rocks, 



And seem, and are, but rivers turn'd to stone : 



Changeless as death they look ; eternal calm 



Seems in their features fix'd ; and now, forsooth, 



I see a world all moveless, silent, dead. 



And yet this fear, this sense of time and space 



Greater than I, is in my mind and me; 



For do but make me larger, so that I, 



In semblance like a god, may drown this world 



Within a test-tube, pouring on these rocks 



