Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/60

 III

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS

OW and then a name becomes durably known in literature through the reputation of a single fugitive poem. Our English lyrical system has, of course, its greater and lesser planets, with their groups of attendant satellites. At irregular periods, some comet flashes into view, lights up the skies for a time, and then disappears beyond the vision. Whether, after the completion of a cycle, it will again attract attention and become an accepted portion of this solar family, or whether, being of a transient though garish presence, it will lessen forever upon its hyperbolic skyway, cannot always be determined by observers. And lastly, at the risk of tearing a metaphor to tatters, I may say that there are scattered through certain intervals of the system, like those fragments between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, the asteroidal poets, each of whom we have recognized by a single and distinctive point of light.

The one effort of an amateur is accepted by the people, or gains favor with compilers who select and preserve whatever is of lasting value. The result is a wide public knowledge of these kinless poems, and [46]