234 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The spectrum, as Keats knew it, may have been tongueless, 

 and less inspiring as a straight strip than as a celestial arch, 

 though it is difficult to understand how it could ever have been 

 shorn of its mystery. But, with our present knowledge and the 

 endless avenues into the Unknown which it has set before our 

 eyes, who can deny that Newton, by relating the rainbow to 

 the eternal, universal realities of the spectrum, has invested it 

 with a deeper, with a far nobler mystery than any that could 

 reside in the impossible fires of the poet's imagining ? For 

 mystery, when all is said, is the latest word of science. As the 

 sea of knowledge extends, its waters go deeper, and farther 

 beyond the soundings of our finite plummets. Spectroscopy 

 is far from the shore, but the boundless ocean is before it. 



