518 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



magnetization and demagnetization is transmitted to the carbon points of the lan- 

 tern, and reappears as a distinct musical tone.] 



A weird, sweet melody, faint and far, 



A humming murmur, a rhythmic ring, 

 Floats down the tower from where the lenses are 



Can you hear the song which the carbons sing ? 



Millions of seons have rolled away 



In the grand chorale which the stars rehearse, 



Since the note, so sweet in our song to-day, 

 Was struck in the chord of the universe. 



The vast vibration went floating on 



Through the diapason of space and time, 

 Till the impulse swelled to a deeper tone 



And mellowed and thrilled with a finer, rhyme. 



Backward and forward the atoms go 



In the surging tide of that sounding sea. 

 Whose billows from nowhere to nowhere flow, 



As they break on the sands of eternity. 



Yet through all the coasts of the endless All, 



In the ages to come, as in ages gone, 

 We feel but the throb of that mystic thrall 



Which binds, responsive, the whole in one. 



We feel but the pulse of that viewless hand 



Which ever has been and still shall be, 

 In the stellar orb and the grain of sand. 



Through nature's endless paternity. 



The smile which plays in the maiden's glance, 



Or stirs in the beat of the insect's wing, 

 Is of kin with the north light's spectral dance. 



Or the dazzling zone of the planet's ring. 



From our lonely tower aloft in air. 



With the breezes around us, tranquil and free, 



When the storm rack pales in the lightning's glare 

 Or the starlight sleeps in the sleeping sea. 



We send our greeting, through breathless space, 



To our distant cousins, the nebulae, 

 And catch, in the comet's misty trace. 



But a drifting leaf from the tribal tree. 



