Missing the Meteors, 1866

A hint of rain — a touch of lazy doubt —
Sent me to bedward on that prime of nights,
When the air met and burst the aerolites,
Making the men stare and the children shout:
Why did no beam from all that rout and rush
Of darting meteors, pierce my drowséd head?
Strike on the portals of my sleep? and flush
My spirit through mine eyelids, in the stead
Of that poor vapid dream? My soul was pained,
My very soul, to have slept while others woke,
While little children their delight outspoke,
And in their eyes' small chambers entertained
Far motions of the Kosmos! I mistook
The purport of that night — it had not rained.

A Look-Out for Thirty Years

Oh ! deaf to Science and her faithful words!
I counted on those fires of prophecy
No more than on some flight of midnight birds,
That pass, unheralded, with sudden cry, —
That never travelled under Humboldt's eye,
Nor owed themselves at Greenwich. Thirty years
Must pass ere such bright vision reappears,
And then I shall be dead or near to die;
Or, should my life bridge over that great gap,
I cannot vouch for my decrepit self,
With feeble knees, weak eyes, and velvet cap,
And all my forethought laid upon the shelf;
But some good youth, or maid, or rosy elf,
Shall set my thin face heavenward, it may hap.