On Method -- Mary Margaret Sloan

How pleasantly the spectacle touched our cultivated
view: terraced plantations of stellar design, hills
sparkling with minerals and trees. Bound in our line
of sight, the power to which it is raised succeeds

as a branch of thought. An instrumental forest cast
chromatic shadows within the scale of blue, forestalling
an art of confusion and obscure calculations,
a magnitude too distant or too small
to apprehend. Or was apprehended as an

order to prevent internal reflections
in error, in rough terms. Let variable stars be
the number, n, as they fluctuate, rushing in brightness
and significance beyond the threshold of unaided touch.