Poem by Charles Tennyson Turner

Missing the Meteors

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 drowsed 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 purpose of that night--it had not rained.

1. The South-Foreland Electric Light
2. The Hydraulic Ram, or The Influence of Sound on Mood
3. Silkworms and Spiders
4. The Sonneteer to the Sea-Shell
5. On the Eclipse of the Moon of October 1865

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