Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/221

 Our thoughts, now half stunned, fly back across unthinkable starless intervals, back like a magnet to the phosphorescent gleam which is ours in the boundless ocean in which a universe is but a gleam. Nearer—nearer—nearer—the gleam has softened to a touch of mist, the mist has expanded to a definite shape studded with stars which are brightening, and widening apart. Now the shape has become an ethereal form, and before us rises a marvelous creation. As seen from this outer point, our Galaxy is neither a ring nor a wreath but is formed of huge spirals which reach far outward into the heavens. This cathedral of light, whose "lace-work" is of suns, covers an area so magnificent that a beam of light traveling 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year would require some 300,000 years to cross it! Around a modest, medium-sized star in the central cluster of this overwhelming and heroic structure, whirls a tiny planet named Earth, and on this Earth, the infinitesimal human being named Man, whose questioning mind thus flies from star to star.