Dowser:
Stir and flare!
You'll soon forget your rocket.
Merrick:
Tell you what
I thought last night, now, going home. Says I,
'Tis just like the look of a tadpole: if I saw
A tadpole silver as a dace that swam
Upside-down towards me through black water,
I'ld see the plain spit of that star and his tail.
Sollers:
And how does your thought go?
Dowser:
It's what I know!--
A tadpole and a rocket!--My dear God,
And I can still laugh out!--What do you think
Your tadpole's made of? What lets your rocket fling
Those streaming sparks across the half of night,
Splashing the burning spray of its haste among
The quiet business of the other stars?
Ay, that's a fiery jet it leaves behind
In such enormous drift! What sort of fire
Is spouted so, spouted and never quenching?--
There is no name for that star's fire: it is
The fire that was before the world was made,
The fire that all the things we live among
Remember being; and whitest fire we know
Is its poor copy in their dreaming trance!
Huff:
That would be hell fire.
Dowser:
Ay, if you like, hell fire,
Hell fire flying through the night! 'Twould be
A thing to blink about, a blast of it
Swept in your face, eh? and a thing to set
The whole stuff of the earth smoking rarely?
Which of you said 'the heat's a wonder to-night'?
You have not done with marvelling.
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