Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-05-13
No Danger From the Comet.

To the Editor OF The Star:
Sir: Among the earlier poems 1880
1856 of the late Oliver Wendell Holmes
are the humorous lines below, apropos
of popular forebodings during the ap-
proach of Halleys comet i'm 1885. IT
these verses. which Were recited in
school when I was a boy, have been
reprinted lately 1 have not noted the
fact. People have become somewhat
wiser. extraordinarily. al least, IN
chrenieled the other day the suicide OF
a man I'm Ohio and the insanity of an
other who lived farther west from fear
of the approaching comet, and doubt
less there are timorouS souls, not q
few, who are secretly nervous over
possibilities" The good-natured rail-
lery that underlies DIR. Holmes lines.
1T has been said. served 20 quiet popular
fears in 1885, and perhaps the same
might serve a similar end now.
The Comet: He is on his way.
And singing he flies:
The whizzins planets shrink before
The specter Of the skies.
All, well may regal orbs burn blue
Ten million cubic miles OF head.
Ten billion leagues OF tail.
On. on by whistling spheres OF light
He flashes and he flames:
He turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names:
w hwsy DARKNESS away sn night l. bottled up
And sold for ''Tyran Dye
And what would happen TO the land,
And how would look the sea,
II i'm tie bearded DEVILS path
Our Earth should chance TO be
Full hot and high the would boil.
Methought saw and heard II al
In a dyspeptic dream.
I saw a tutor take his tube
The comets course TO spy:
1 heard q scream-the gathered rays
Had stewed the tutors eye.
I saw a fort-the soldiers all
Pop cracked the guns: WIKI few the halls.
Bang went the magazine.
saw the scalding pitch roll down
And he streams Gf of smoke. ike EVA waterspouts.
Burst through the rumbling mines;
I asked the frenen why they made
Such noise about the town -
They answered not-but all the while
The brakes went up and down.
I saw q roasting pullet sit
Upon a baking egg:
E1tinSuishing his leg;
nine geese upon the Wng
Toward the frozen pole.
And every mothers costing feu
Crisped to u cracking coal
1 saw the OK that browsed the grass
Writhe in the blisterins rays.
The heritage In his shrinking jaws
Was all a fiery blaze:
I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags.
Bob through the butbling brine:
And thoughts OF supper crossed my soul:
had been rash at mine.
Strange sights. Strange sounds. o fearful
dreami
lis memory haunts me still.
The steamng sea, the crimson glare
That ureathed each wooded hill.
Stranger. Ii through thy Keeling brain
Such midnight visions sweep,
Snare spare, % spare thine evening meal
And sweet will be thy sleep.
To which we may add the comforting
fact-now a scientific certainty-that q
comets tail is so many times lighter
than the earth's atmosphere that should
its tail come near enough to brush the
earths atmosphere any farther than a
fog can penetrate the water of the ocean,
hut must needs be bent and turned aside
forty to sixty miles above the earth's
surface. like a camel's hear brush drawn
across a canvas. Moreover, comets have
tried to brush the earth heretofore. and
not even astronomers kne Wit until long
after. when they figured OUT mathe-
inatically that such must have been
the fact. III. M BUTLER