72 poems with astronomical themes. Gathered from books, collected on the WWW, selected, scanned, typed, and posted by Peter Abrahams, telscope@europa.com (updated 13 September 2000) (home page http://www.europa.com/~telscope/binotele.htm ) ============================= The More Loving One, W.H. Auden The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Francis W. Bourdillon The Lost Pleiad, John Brainard To the Moon, John Brainard Distances, William Stanley Braithwaite My Star, Robert Browning The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, William Cullen Bryant The Constellations, William Cullen Bryant Hymn to the North Star, William Cullen Bryant Song of the Stars, William Cullen Bryant In Starry Skies, Sterling Bunch Stella Flammarum: An Ode to Halley's Comet, Wilfred Campbell XXXI, Bliss Carman LXIX, Bliss Carman Gondibert, William Davenant I Look Into The Stars, Jane Draper Acquainted with the Night, Robert Frost Astrometaphysical, Robert Frost Bravado, Robert Frost Canis Major, Robert Frost Choose Something Like a Star, Robert Frost Fireflies in the Garden, Robert Frost The Freedom of the Moon, Robert Frost The Literate Farmer and the Planet Venus, Robert Frost A Loose Mountain (Telescopic), Robert Frost Lost in Heaven, Robert Frost Moon Compasses, Robert Frost On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations, Robert Frost On Making Certain Anything has Happened, Robert Frost A Question, Robert Frost Skeptic, Robert Frost A Star in a Stoneboat, Robert Frost The Star Splitter, Robert Frost Full Moon, Tu Fu Andromeda, George Brewster Gallup Song of Honor, Ralph Hodgson The Infinite Stars, A.C. Holm Orion, Charles N. Holmes A Perfect Night, Charles Never Holmes The Shooting Star, Charles N. Holmes The Secret of the Stars, Oliver Wendell Holmes Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art, John Keats Rubaiyyat, Omar Khayaam The Galaxy, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Moonlight, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Occultation of Orion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Friends of Mine, Richard Herbert Mann Meditation Under Stars, George Meredith Watchers of the Sky, Alfred Noyes Stars, Marjorie Pickthall Alone and Drinking Under the Moon, Li Po Evening Star, Edgar Allan Poe The Old Amateur, R. Burnside Potter For the Conjunction of Two Planets, Adrienne Cecile Rich Love of Night, T. Rodd O Moon, Ronald Ross (untitled), Percy Bysshe Shelly Hymn to Selene, Homeric, translated by Percy Bysshe Shelly Arectyng my syght, John Skelton Aldebaran at Dusk, George Sterling The Star, Jane Taylor Arcturus in Autumn, Sara Teasdale Applied Astronomy, Esther B. Tiffany The Star, Henry Vaughan Europa, Derek Walcott Cosmic Endings, Wade Wellman When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, Walt Whitman Blinded by the Light, Sarah Williams The Old Astronomer to His Pupil, Sarah Williams El Hombre, William Carlos Williams Star-Gazers, William Wordsworth Who but is Pleased to Watch the Moon on High, William Wordsworth ================================================ ================================================ The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total darkness sublime, Though this might take me a little time. W.H. Auden, 1957 ========================================= The Night Has A Thousand Eyes The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done. Francis W. Bourdillon ================================================ The Lost Pleiad O! How calm and how beautiful--look at the night! The planets are wheeling in pathways of light; And the lover, or poet, with heart, or with eye, Sends his gaze with a tear, or his soul with a sigh. But from Fesole's summit the Tuscan looked forth, To eastward and westward, to south and to north; Neither planet nor star could his vision delight, 'Till his own bright Pleiades should rise to his sight. They rose, and he numbered their glittering train -- They shone bright as he counted them over again; But the star of his love, the bright gem of the cluster, Arose not to lend the Pleiades its lustre. And thus, when the splendor of beauty has blazed, On light and on loveliness, how have we gazed! And how sad have we turned from the sight, when we found That the fairest and sweetest was "not on the ground." John Brainard, 1796-1828 =========================== To the Moon Bless thy bright face! though often blessed before By raving maniac and by pensive fool; One would say something more-- but who as yet, When looking at thee in the deep blue sky, Could tell the poorest thought that struck his heart? Yet all have tried, and all have tried in vain. At thee, poor planet, is the first attempt That the young rhymster ventures. And the sigh The boyish lover heaves, is at the Moon. Bards, who -- ere Milton sung or Shakspeare played The dirge of sorrow, or the song of love, Bards, who had higher soared than Fesole, Knew better of the Moon. 'T was there they found Vain thoughts, lost hopes, and fancy's happy dreams, And all sweet sounds, such as have fled afar From waking discords, and from daylight jars. There Ariosto puts the widow's weeds When she, new wedded, smiles abroad again, And there the sad maid's innocence -- 't is there That broken vows and empty promises, All good intentions, with no answering deed To anchor them on the substantial earth, Are shrewdly packed. -- And could he think that thou, So bright, so pure of aspect, so serene, Art the mere storehouse of our faults and crimes? I'd rather think as puling rhymsters think, O; love-sick maidens fancy -- Yea, prefer The dairy notion that thou art but cheese, Green cheese --than thus misdoubt thy honest face. John Brainard, 1796-1828 ========================== Distances Just where that star above Shines with a cold, dispassionate smile -- If in the flesh I'd travel there, How many, many a mile! If this, my soul, should be Unprisoned from its earthly bond, Time could not count its markless flight Beyond that star, beyond! William Stanley Braithwaite, 1878-1962. =========================== My Star All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (like an angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with Saturn above it, What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. Robert Browning, 1812-1889 ============================ The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus I would not always reason. The straight path Wearies us with its never-varying lines, And we grow melancholy. I would make Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit Patiently by the way-side, while I traced The mazes of the pleasant wilderness Around me. She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers, And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe. I bow Reverently to her dictates, but not less Hold to the fair illusions of old time-- Illusions that shed brightness over life, And glory over nature. Look, even now, Where two bright planets in the twilight meet, Upon the saffron heaven,--the imperial star Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe, Awhile, that they are met for ends of good, Amid the evening glory, to confer Of men and their affairs, and to shed down Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright, And shake out softer fires! The great earth feels The gladness and the quiet of the time. Meekly the mighty river, that infolds This mighty city, smooths his front, and far Glitters and burns even to the rocky base Of the dark heights that bound him to the west; And a deep murmur, from the many streets, Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence Dark and sad thoughts awhile--there's time for them Hereafter--on the morrow we will meet, With melancholy looks, to tell our griefs, And make each other wretched; this calm hour, This balmy, blessed evening, we will give To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days, Born of the meeting of those glorious stars. Enough of drought has parched the year, and scared The land with dread of famine. Autumn, yet, Shall make men glad with unexpected fruits. The dog-star shall shine harmless; genial days Shall softly glide away into the keen And wholesome cold of winter; he that fears The pestilence, shall gaze on those pure beams, And breathe, with confidence, the quiet air. Emblems of power and beauty! well may they Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw Towards the great Pacific, marking out The path of empire. Thus, in our own land, Ere long, the better Genius of our race, Having encompassed earth, and tamed its tribes, Shall sit him down beneath the farthest west, By the shore of that calm ocean, and look back On realms made happy. Light the nuptial torch, And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that knits The youth and maiden. Happy days to them That wed this evening!--a long life of love, And blooming sons and daughters! Happy they Born at this hour,--for they shall see an age Whiter and holier than the past, and go Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer hearts, And shudder at the butcheries of war, As now at other murders. Hapless Greece! Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and stained Thy rivers; deep enough thy chains have worn Their links into thy flesh; the sacrifice Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes, And reverend priests, has expiated all Thy crimes of old. In yonder mingling lights There is an omen of good days for thee. Thou shalt arise from 'midst the dust and sit Again among the nations. Thine own arm Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like thine The world takes part. Be it a strife of kings,-- Despot with despot battling for a throne,-- And Europe shall be stirred throughout her realms, Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall Upon each other, and in all their bounds The wailing of the childless shall not cease, Thine is a war for liberty, and thou Must fight it single-handed. The old world Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race, And leaves thee to the struggle; and the new,-- I fear me thou couldst tell a shameful tale Of fraud and lust of gain;--thy treasury drained, And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs Shall put new strength into thy heart and hand, And God and thy good sword shall yet work out, For thee, a terrible deliverance. William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878 =========================== The Constellations O Constellations of the early night, That sparkled brighter as the twilight died, And made the darkness glorious! I have seen Your rays grow dim upon the horizon's edge, And sink behind the mountains. I have seen The great Orion, with his jewelled belt, That large-limbed warrior of the skies, go down Into the gloom. Beside him sank a crowd Of shining ones. I look in vain to find The group of sister-stars, which mothers love To show their wondering babes, the gentle Seven. Along the desert space mine eyes in vain Seek the resplendent cressets which the Twins Uplifted in their ever-youthful hands. The streaming tresses of the Egyptian Queen Spangle the heavens no more. The Virgin trails No more her glittering garments through the blue. Gone! all are gone! and the forsaken Night, With all her winds, in all her dreary wastes, Sighs that they shine upon her face no more. No only here and there a little star Looks forth alone. Ah me! I know them not, Those dim successors of the numberless host That filled the heavenly fields, and flung to earth Their guivering fires. And now the middle watch Betwixt the eve and morn is past, and still The darkness gains upon the sky, and still It closes round my way. Shall, then, the Night, Grow starless in her later hours? Have these No train of flaming watchers, that shall mark Their coming and farewell? O Sons of Light! Have ye then left me ere the dawn of day To grope along my journey sad and faint? Thus I complained, and from the darkness round A voice replied--was it indeed a voice, Or seeming accents of a waking dream Heard by the inner ear? But thus it said: O Traveller of the Night! thine eyes are dim With watching; and the mists, that chill the vale Down which thy feet are passing, hide from view The ever-burning stars. It is thy sight That is so dark, and not the heavens. Thine eyes, Were they but clear, would see a fiery host Above thee; Hercules, with flashing mace, The Lyre with silver cords, the Swan uppoised On gleaming wings, the Dolphin gliding on With glistening scales, and that poetic steed, With beamy mane, whose hoof struck out from earth The fount of Hippocrene, and many more, Fair clustered splendors, with whose rays the Night Shall close her march in glory, ere she yield, To the young Day, the great earth steeped in dew. So spake the monitor, and I perceived How vain were my repinings, and my thought Went backward to the vanished years and all The good and great who came and passed with them, And knew that ever would the years to come Bring with them, in their course, the good and great, Lights of the world, though, to my clouded sight, Their rays might seem but dim, or reach me not. William Cullen Bryant ============================= Hymn to the North Star The sad and solemn night Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires; The glorious host of light Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they: Through the blue fields afar, Unseen, they follow in his flaming way: Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him. And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Alone, in thy cold skies, Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. There, at morn's rosy birth, Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air, And eve, that round the earth Chases the day, beholds thee watching there; There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls. Alike, beneath thine eye, The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the star-lit sky Towns blaze--the smoke of battle blots the sun-- The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-- And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. On thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right. And, therefore, bards of old, Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good, That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way. William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878 ========================== Song of the Stars When the radiant morn of creation broke, And the world in the smile of God awoke, And the empty realms of darkness and death Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath, And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame From the void abyss by myriads came,-- In the joy of youth as they darted away, Through the widening wastes of space to play, Their silver voices in chorus rung, And this was the song the bright ones sung. "Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,-- The fair blue fields that before us lie,-- Each sun, with the worlds that round him roll, Each planet, poised on her turning pole; With her isles of green, and her clouds of white, And her waters that lie like fluid light. "For the source of glory uncovers his face, And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space; And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides In our ruddy air and our blooming sides: Lo, yonder the living splendours play; Away, on our joyous path, away! "Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, In the infinite azure, star after star, How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass! How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass! And the path of the gentle winds is seen, Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean. "And see, where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues, Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews; And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground, With her shadowy cone the night goes round! "Away, away! in our blossoming bowers, In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, In the seas and fountains that shine with morn, See, Love is brooding, and Life is born, And breathing myriads are breaking from night, To rejoice like us, in motion and light. "Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, To weave the dance that measures the years; Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent, To the farthest wall of the firmament,-- The boundless visible smile of Him, To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim." William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878 ========================== In Starry Skies, Sterling Bunch In starry skies, long years ago, I found my Science. Heart aglow I watched each night unfold a maze Of mystic suns and worlds ablaze, That spoke: "Know us and wiser grow." And with each season's ebb and flow, My soul with faltering steps and slow, Still wanders up far-glimmering ways, In starry skies. Nor do I heed Life's gaudy show, But onward, upward I shall go, Until new star-lands meet my gaze, And where, perhaps in after days, I'll learn the things I long to know In starry skies. Sterling Bunch ========================== Stella Flammarum: An Ode to Halley's Comet Strange wanderer out of the deeps, Whence, journeying, come you? From what far, unsunned sleeps Did fate foredoom you, Returning for ever again Through the surgings of man, A flaming, awesome portent of dread Down the centuries' span? Riddle! from the dark unwrung By all earth's sages;-- God's fiery torch from His hand outflung, To flame through the ages: Thou Satan of planets eterne, 'Mid angry path, Chained, in circlings vast, to burn Out ancient wrath. By what dread hand first loosed From fires eternal? With majesties dire infused Of force supernal, Takest thy headlong way O'er the highways of space? O wonderful, blossoming flower of fear On the sky's far face! What secret of destiny's will In thy wild burning? What portent dire of humanity's ill In thy returning? Or art thou brand of love In masking of bale? And bringest thou ever some mystical surcease For all who wail? Perchance, O Visitor dread, Thou hast thine appointed Task, thou bolt of the vast outsped! With God's anointed, Performest some endless toil In the universe wide, Feeding or curing some infinite need Where the vast worlds ride. Once, only once, thy face Will I view in this breathing; Just for a space thy majesty trace 'Mid earth's mad seething; Ere I go hence to my place, As thou to thy deeps, Thou flambent core of a universe dread, Where all else sleeps. But thou and man's spirit are one, Thou poet! thou flaming Soul of the dauntless sun, Past all reclaiming! One in that red unrest, That yearning, that surge, That mounting surf of the infinite dream, O'er eternity's verge. Wilfred Campbell 1910 =========================== XXXI On the meridian of the night Alcar the Tester marks high June; Arcturus knows his zenith fame; No grass-head sleeps upon the dune. And up from the southeastern sea, Antares, the red summer star, Brings back the ardours of the earth, Like fire opals in a jar: The frail and misty sense of things Beyond mortality's ado, The soft delirium of dream, And joy pale virgins never knew. Bliss Carman, 1861-1929 =========================== LXIX In the blue opal of a winter noon, When all the world was a white floor Lit by the northern sun, I saw with naked eyes a midday star Burn on like gleaming spar, Where all its fellows of the mighty dusk Had perished one by one. When I shall have put by the vagrant will, And down this rover's twilight road Emerge into the sun, Be thou my only sheer and single star, Known, named, and followed far, When all these Jack-o'-lantern hopes and fears Have perished one by one! Bliss Carman, 1861-1929 ============================ Gondibert (Book 2, canto 5, stanzas 15-20) He shews them now Tow'rs of prodigious height, Where Natures Friends, Philosophers, remain, To censure Meteors in their cause and flight; And watch the Wind's authority on Rain. Others with Optick Tubes the Moons scant face (Vaste Tubes, which like long Cedars mounted lie) Attract through Glasses to so neer a space, As if they came not to survey, but prie. Nine hasty Centuries are now fulfill'd, Since Opticks first were known to Astragon; By whom the Moderns are become so skill'd They dream of seeing to the Maker's Throne. And wisely Astragon, thus busy grew, To seek the Stars remote societies; And judge the walks of th' old, by finding new; For Nature's law, in correspondence lies. Man's pride (grown to Religion) he abates, By moving our lov'd Earth; which we think fix'd; Think all to it, and it to none relates; With others motion scorn to have it mix'd: As if 'twere great and stately to stand still Whilst other Orbes dance on; or else think all Those vaste bright Globes (to shew God's needless skill) Were made but to attend our little Ball. William Davenant, 1650 ============================ I Look Into The Stars, Jane Draper Stars have ways I do not know, Enormity that checks my thought, Yet on the loom of their fine glow The fabric of my dreams is wrought. I look into the stars, and one After one, convictions die, While more than I have lost is spun Delicately across the sky. I look into the stars, and all The fuming purposes life gives Pass, like mists of evening fall, And all life never has been, lives. Jane Draper ============================ Acquainted with the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, O luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Robert Frost 1874-1963 ============================ Astrometaphysical Lord, I have loved your sky, Be it said against or for me, Have loved it clear and high, Or low and stormy. Till I have reeled and stumbled From looking up too much, And fallen and been humbled To wear a crutch. My love for every Heaven O'er which you, Lord, have lorded, From number One to Seven Should be rewarded. It may not give me hope That when I am translated My scalp will in the cope Be constellated. But if that seems to tend To my undue renown, At least it ought to send Me up, not down. Robert Frost ============================== Bravado Have I not walked without an upward look Of caution under stars that very well Might not have missed me when they shot and fell? It was a risk I had to take -- and took. Robert Frost ============================ Canis Major The great Overdog, That heavenly beast With a star in one eye, Gives a leap in the east. He dances upright All the way to the west, And never once drops On his forefeet to rest. I'm a poor underdog, But to-night I will bark With the great Overdog That romps through the dark. Robert Frost, 1928 ========================= Choose Something Like a Star O Star (the fairest one in sight) We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud -- It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says, "I burn." But say with what degree of heat. Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade. Use language we can comprehend. Tell us what elements you blend. It gives us strangely little aid, But does tell something in the end. And steadfast as Keat's Eremite, Not even stooping from its sphere, It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid. Robert Frost ============================== Fireflies in the Garden Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part. Robert Frost - 1928 ============================== The Freedom of the Moon I've tried the new moon tilted in the air Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster As you might try a jewel in your hair. I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster, Alone, or in one ornament combining With one first-water star almost shining. I put it shining anywhere I please. By walking slowly on some evening later I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees, And brought it over glossy water, greater, And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow, The color run, all sorts of wonder follow. Robert Frost - 1928 ====================================== The Literate Farmer and the Planet Venus A Dated Popular-Science Medley on a Mysterious Light Recently Observed in the Western Sky at Evening My unexpected knocking at the door Started chairs thundering on the kitchen floor, Knives and forks ringing on the supper plates, Voices conflicting like the candidates. A mighty farmer flung the house door wide, He and a lot of children came outside, And there on an equality we stood. That's the time knocking at a door did good. 'I stopped to compliment you on this star You get the beauty of from where you are. To see it so, the bright and only one In sunset light, you'd think it was the sun That hadn't sunk the way it should have sunk, But right in heaven was slowly being shrunk So small as to be virtually gone, Yet there to watch the darkness coming on- Like someone dead permitted to exist Enough to see if he was greatly missed. I didn't see the sun set. Did it set? Will anybody swear that isn't it? And will you give me shelter for the night? If not, a glass of milk will be all right.' 'Traveler, I'm glad you asked about that light. Your mind mistrusted there was something wrong, And naturally you couldn't go along Without inquiring if 'twas serious. 'Twas providential you applied to us, Who were just on the subject when you came. There is a star that's Serious by name And nature too, but this is not the same. This light's been going on for several years, Although at times we think it disappears. You'll hear all sorts of things. You'll meet with them Will tell you it's the star of Bethlehem Above some more religion in a manger. But put that down to superstition, Stranger. What's a star doing big as a baseball? Between us two it's not a star at all. It's a new patented electric light, Put up on trial by that Jerseyite So much is being now expected of, To give developments the final shove And turn us into the next specie folks Are going to be, unless these monkey jokes Of the last fifty years are all a libel, And Darwin's proved mistaken, not the Bible. I s'pose you have your notions on the vexed Question of what we're turning into next.' 'As liberals we're willing to give place To any demonstrably better race, No matter what the color of its skin. (But what a human race the white has been!) I heard a fellow in a public lecture On Pueblo Indians and their architecture Declare that if such Indians inherited The condemned world the legacy was merited. So far as he, the speaker, was concerned He had his ticket bought, his passage earned, To take the Mayflower back where he belonged Before the Indian race was further wronged. But come, enlightened as in talk you seem, You don't believe that that first-water gleam Is not a star?' 'Believe it? Why, I know it. Its actions any cloudless night will show it. You'll see it be allowed up just so high, Say about halfway up the western sky, And then get slowly, slowly pulled back down. You might not notice if you've lived in town, As I suspect you have. A town debars Much notice of what's going on in stars. The idea is no doubt to make one job Of lighting the whole night with one big blob Of electricity in bulk the way The sun sets the example in the day.' 'Here come more stars to character the skies, And they in the estimation of the wise Are more divine than any bulb or arc, Because their purpose is to flash and spark, But not to take away the precious dark. We need the interruption of the night To ease attention off when overtight, To break our logic in too long a flight, And ask us if our premises are right.' 'Sick talk, sick talk, sick sentimental talk! It doesn't do you any good to walk. I see what you are: can't get you excited With hopes of getting mankind unbenighted. Some ignorance takes rank as innocence. Have it for all of me and have it dense. The slave will never thank his manumitter; Which often makes the manumitter bitter.' 'In short, you think that star a patent medicine Put up to cure the world by Mr. Edison.' 'You said it—that's exactly what it is. My son in Jersey says a friend of his Knows the old man and nobody's so deep In incandescent lamps and ending sleep. The old man argues science cheapened speed. A good cheap anti-dark is now the need. Give us a good cheap twenty-four-hour day, No part of which we'd have to waste, I say, And who knows where we can't get! Wasting time In sleep or slowness is the deadly crime. He gave up sleep himself some time ago, It puffs the face and brutalizes so. You take the ugliness all so much dread, Called getting out of the wrong side of bed That is the source perhaps of human hate, And weIl may be where wars originate. Get rid of that and there'd be left no great Of either murder or war in any land. You know how cunningly mankind is planned: We have one loving and one hating hand. The loving's made to hold each other like, While with the hating other hand we strike. The blow can be no stronger than the clutch, Or soon we'd bat each other out of touch, And the fray wouldn't last a single round. And still it's bad enough to badly wound, And if our getting up to start the day On the right side of bed would end the fray, We'd hail the remedy. But it's been tried And found, he says, a bed has no right side. The trouble is, with that receipt for love, A bed's got no right side to get out of. We can't be trusted to the sleep we take, And simply must evolve to stay awake. He thinks that chairs and tables will endure, But beds—in less than fifty years he's sure There will be no such piece of furniture. He's surely got it in for cots and beds. No need for us to rack our common heads About it, though. We haven't got the mind. It best be left to great men of his kind Who have no other object than our good. There's a lot yet that isn't understood. Ain't it a caution to us not to fix No limits to what rose in rubbing sticks On fire to scare away the pterodix When man first lived in caves along the creeks?' 'Marvelous world in nineteen-twenty-six.' Robert Frost ================================ A Loose Mountain (Telescopic) Did you stay up last night (the Magi did) To see the star shower known as Leonid That once a year by hand or apparatus Is so mysteriously pelted at us? It is but fiery puffs of dust and pebbles, No doubt directed at our heads as rebels In having taken artificial light Against the ancient sovereignty of night. A fusillade of blanks and empty flashes, It never reaches earth except as ashes Of which you feel no least touch on your face Nor find in dew the slightest cloudy trace. Nevertheless it constitutes a hint That the loose mountain lately seen to glint In sunlight near us in momentous swing Is something in a Balearic sling The heartless and enormous Outer Black Is still withholding in the Zodiac But from irresolution in his back About when best to have us in our orbit, So we won't simply take it and absorb it. Robert Frost ============================= Lost in Heaven The clouds, the source of rain, one stormy night Offered an opening to the source of dew; Which I accepted with impatient sight, Looking for my old skymarks in the blue. But stars were scarce in that part of the sky, And no two were of the same constellation— No one was bright enough to identify; So 'twas with not ungrateful consternation, Seeing myself well lost once more, I sighed, 'Where, where in Heaven am I? But don't tell me Oh, opening clouds, by opening on me wide. Let's let my heavenly lostness overwhelm me.' Robert Frost ==================================== Moon Compasses I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause Between two downpours to see what there was. And a masked moon had spread down compass rays To a cone mountain in the midnight haze, As if the final estimate were hers, And as it measured in her calipers, The mountain stood exalted in its place. So love will take between the hands a face.... Robert Frost ====================================== On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations You'll wait a long, long time for anything much To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves. The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch, Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud. The planets seem to interfere in their curves But nothing ever happens, no harm is done. We may as well go patiently on with our life, And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane. It is true the longest drought will end in rain, The longest peace in China will end in strife. Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break On his particular time and personal sight. That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night. Robert Frost =============================== On Making Certain Anything has Happened I could be worse employed Than as a watcher of the void Whose part should be to tell What star if any fell Suppose some seed-pearl sun Should be the only one; Yet still I must report Some cluster one star short. I should justly hesitate To frighten church or state By announcing a star down From say the Cross or Crown. To make sure what star I missed I should have to check on my list Every star in sight It might take me all night. Robert Frost ===================================== A Question A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth. Robert Frost ================================== Skeptic Far star that tickles for me my sensitive plate And fries a couple of ebon atoms white, I don't believe I believe a thing you state. I put no faith in the seeming facts of light. I don't believe I believe you're the last in space, I don't believe you're anywhere near the last, I don't believe what makes you red in the face Is after explosion going away so fast. The universe may or may not be very immense. As a matter of fact there are times when I am apt To feel it close in tight against my sense Like a caul in which I was born and am still wrapped. Robert Frost ===================================== A Star in a Stoneboat Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a wall. Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold, And saving that its weight suggested gold And tugged it from his first too certain hold, He noticed nothing in it to remark. He was not used to handling stars thrown in the dark And lifeless from an interrupted arc. He did not recognize in that smooth coal The one thing palpable besides the soul To penetrate the air in which we roll. He did not see how like a flying thing It brooded ant eggs, and had one large wing, One not so large for flying in a ring. And a long Bird of Paradise's tail (Though these when not in use to fly and trail It drew back in its body like a snail); Nor know that he might move it from the spot - The harm was done: from having been star-shot The very nature of the soil was hot And burning to yield flowers instead of grain, Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain. He moved it roughly with an iron bar, He loaded an old stoneboat with the star And not, as you might think, a flying car, Such as even poets would admit perforce More practical than Pegasus the horse If it could put a star back in its course. He dragged it through the plowed ground at a pace But faintly reminiscent of the race Of jostling rock in interstellar space. It went for building stone, and I, as though Commanded in a dream, forever go To right the wrong that this should have been so. Yet ask where else it could have gone as well, I do not know - I cannot stop to tell: He might have left it lying where it fell. From following walls I never lift my eye, Except at night to places in the sky Where showers of charted meteors fly. Some may know what they seek in school and church, And why they seek it there; for what I search I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch; Sure that though not a star of death and birth, So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth - Though not, I say, a star of death and sin, It yet has poles, and only needs a spin To show its wordly nature and begin To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm And run off in strange tangents with my arm, As fish do with the line in first alarm. Such as it is, it promises the prize Of the one world complete in any size That I am like to compass, fool or wise. Robert Frost, 1923 ================================ The Star Splitter `You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something I should have done by daylight, and indeed, After the ground is frozen, I should have done Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney To make fun of my way of doing things, Or else fun of Orion's having caught me. Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights These forces are obliged to pay respect to?' So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming, Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming He burned his house down for the fire insurance And spent the proceeds on a telescope To satisfy a lifelong curiosity About our place among the infinities. `What do you want with one of those blame things?' I asked him well beforehand. `Don't you get one!' `Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything More blameless in the sense of being less A weapon in our human fight,' he said. `I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.' There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move, Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years Trying to sell his farm and then not selling, He burned his house down for the fire insurance And bought the telescope with what it came to. He had been heard to say by several: `The best thing that we're put here for's to see; The strongest thing that's given us to see with's A telescope. Someone in every town Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one. In Littleton it might as well be me.' After such loose talk it was no surprise When he did what he did and burned his house down. Mean laughter went about the town that day To let him know we weren't the least imposed on, And he could wait---we'd see to him tomorrow. But the first thing next morning we reflected If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving. Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us, We don't cut off from coming to church suppers, But what we miss we go to him and ask for. He promptly gives it back, that is if still Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of. It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad About his telescope. Beyond the age Of being given one for Christmas gift, He had to take the best way he knew how To find himself in one. Well, all we said was He took a strange thing to be roguish over. Some sympathy was wasted on the house, A good old-timer dating back along; But a house isn't sentient; the house Didn't feel anything. And if it did, Why not regard it as a sacrifice, And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire, Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction? Out of a house and so out of a farm At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn To earn a living on the Concord railroad, As under-ticket-agent at a station Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets, Was setting out, up track and down, not plants As on a farm, but planets, evening stars That varied in their hue from red to green. He got a good glass for six hundred dollars. His new job gave him leisure for stargazing. Often he bid me come and have a look Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside, At a star quaking in the other end. I recollect a night of broken clouds And underfoot snow melted down to ice, And melting further in the wind to mud. Bradford and I had out the telescope. We spread our two legs as we spread its three, Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it, And standing at our leisure till the day broke, Said some of the best things we ever said. That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter, Because it didn't do a thing but split A star in two or three, the way you split A globule of quicksilver in your hand With one stroke of your finger in the middle. It's a star-splitter if there ever was one, And ought to do some good if splitting stars 'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood. We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between the night tonight And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? How different from the way it ever stood? Robert Frost, 1923 =============================== Full Moon Above the tower -- a lone, twice-sized moon. On the cold river passing night-filled homes, It scatters restless gold across the waves. On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze. Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars, Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon Spreading in my old garden . . . All light, All ten thousand miles at once in its light! Tu Fu (AD 712-770), translated by David Hinton ================================ Andromeda White whorls of stars slow turning in the sky, Across the borders of the measured night, On, on beyond the treasures of the eye, Where only magic lenses garner sight: Transparent reapers of dim sheaves of light. One spiral vast, a mote against the sky Now rises like a flock upon the night, Wherein ten thousand million stars rely Upon the boundless, brooding infinite To guide their lambent pinions curved in flight. Behold Andromeda's dim aureole of light, An island universe in yonder sky, Whose rays a million years ago took flight To reach this very hour my wondering eye: Is this O god a throne of thine, I cry. George Brewster Gallup ================================ from "Song of Honor" I stood and stared; the sky was lit, The sky was stars all over it, I stood, I knew not why, Without a wish, without a will, I stood upon that silent hill And stared into the sky until My eyes were blind with stars and still I stared into the sky. Ralph Hodgson (1913) ========================================== The Infinite Stars I stand at night and gaze up at the sky, A huge, inverted bowl above my head; Upon its blue-black concave surface spread, Unnumbered twinkling lights intrigue my eye. A bit of conscious clay upon a speck Of age-cooled fire-mist, sun-warmed into life, With mortal eyes I glimpse a vastness rife With stars whose years no finite mind may reck. Across their background glows the Milky Way, The cradle-place of new born stars untold, Whose light shall shine adown eternity, When those now bright have long been dark and cold. And as I marvel at this vast array, My spirit bows in deep humility. A.C. Holm ================================ Orion When golden Capella is reigning on high And Sirius sparkles with fiery light, The suns of Orion bespangle the sky Like jewels set deep in the vast dome of night; There Rigel and Betelgeuze glitter and glow, Bellatrix burns dimly with wan yellow blaze, And stars of the belt shine as gems in a row Above the faint gleam of the Nebula's haze; Orion the Hunter! - gigantic and bright, Below the red glint of Aldebaran's eye, When Sirius sparkles with fiery light And golden Capella is reigning on high. Charles N. Holmes ================================ A Perfect Night No Moon and not a cloud - a perfect night! A coal-black sky with gleaming gems aglow, A darkling earth when knolls and dales are white, Enwrapped in raiment of untrodden snow. Amidst yon firmament's bespangled span Capella blazes like a beacon's light Above the glare of red Aldebaran Or Pleiades that glitter small and bright. There Procyon is sparkling all alone, Orion's jewels are a gorgeous sight, And Sirius is reigning on his throne, Undimmed as years and cycles take their flight. And where the higher sky-gems gleam and glow There softly shines a golden satellite O'er snow-bound knolls and dales that sleep below Ere Moon has risen on this perfect night. Charles Never Holmes ================================ The Shooting Star Across the darkened dome of night Where sun-kings reign till break of dawn, A shooting star darts fast and bright, Then like a spectral light is gone; It fades from sight, and leaves behind No more a trace than passing wind. Yet, now and then, some shooting star Remains much longer in the sky, It gleams resplendent near and far, But just the same its light must die; Its splendor shines a little more, Then like a breath its life is o'er. Thus ev'ry man, both great and small, What e'er his wealth or mind or fame, Must share the common lot of all, And leave behind a fading name; How ever grand his life may be, It soon is just a memory. Charles N. Holmes ================================ The Secret of the Stars Is man's the only throbbing heart that hides The silent spring that feeds its whispering tides? Speak from the caverns, mystery-breeding Earth, Tell the half-hinted story of thy birth, And calm the noisy champions who have thrown The book of types against the book of stone! Have ye not secrets, ye refulgent spheres, No sleepless listener of the starlight hears? In vain the sweeping equatorial pries Through every world-sown corner of the skies, To the far orb that so remotely strays Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze; In vain the climbing soul of creeping man Metes out the heavenly concave with a span, Tracks into space the long-lost meteor's trail, And weighs an unseen planet in the scale; Still o'er their doubts the waneyed watchers sigh, And Science lifts her still unanswered cry: "Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight, Dumb, vacant, soulless, - baubles of the night? Warmed with God's smile and wafted by his breath, To weave in ceaseless round the dance of Death? Or rolls a sphere in each expanding zone, Crowned with a life as vaired as our own?" Oliver Wendell Holmes ======================================= Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art -- Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors; No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft swell and fall, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever -- or else swoon to death. John Keats ============================== Rubaiyyat (excerpts) When first the Sky's wild horses won their saddles, When Jupiter first blazed, the Pleiads too, My fate was published from God's Judgement seat. How can I err? I act as it is written. Earth's Perigee to Saturn's Apogee -- I have unveiled all astral mysteries: Breaking the barriers of deceit and fraud, Leaping all obstacles but Fate's design. Omar Khayaam, 12th century AD, translated by Robert Graves & Omar Ali- Shah ============================== The Galaxy Torrent of light and river of the air, Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen Like gold and silver sands in some ravine Where mountain streams have left their channels bare ! The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where His patron saint descended in the sheen Of his celestial armor on serene And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair. Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod; But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable, The star dust, that is whirled aloft and flies From the invisible chariot-wheels of God. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ============================= Moonlight As a pale phantom with a lamp Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, So glides the moon along the damp Mysterious chambers of the air. Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, As if this phantom, full of pain, Were by the crumbling walls concealed, And at the windows seen again. Until at last, serene and proud In all the splendor of her light She walks the terraces of cloud, Supreme as Empress of the Night. I look, but recognize no more Objects familiar to my view; The very pathway to my door Is an enchanted avenue. All things are changed. One mass of shade, The elm-trees drop their curtains down; By palace, park, and colonnade I walk as in a foreign town. The very ground beneath my feet Is clothed with a diviner air; White marble paves the silent street And glimmers in the empty square. Illusion! Underneath there lies The common life of every day; Only the spirit glorifies With its own tints the sober gray. In vain we look, in vain uplift Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind; We see but what we have the gift Of seeing; what we bring we find. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1878. ===================== The Occultation of Orion I saw, as in a dream sublime, The balance in the hand of Time. O'er East and West its beam impended; And day, with all its hours of light, Was slowly sinking out of sight, While opposite, the scale of night Silently with the stars ascended. Like the astrologers of eld In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. I saw, with its celestial keys, Its chords of air, its frets of fire The Samian's great Aeolian lyre Rising through all its sevenfold bars From earth unto the fixed stars. And through the dewy atmosphere, Not only could I see, but hear, Its wondrous and harmonious strings, In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere From Dian's circle light and near, Onward to vaster and wider rings, Where, chanting through his beard of snows, Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes, And down the sunless realms of space Reverberates the thunder of his bass. Beneath the sky's triumphal arch This music sounded like a march, And with its chorus seemed to be Preluding some great tragedy. Sirius was rising in the east; And, slow ascending one by one, The kindling constellations shone. Begirt with many a blazing star, Stood the great giant Algebar, Orion, hunter of the beast ! His sword hung gleaming by his side, And, on his arm, the lion's hide Scattered across the midnight air The golden radiance of its hair. The moon was pallid, but not faint; And beautiful as some fair saint, Serenely moving on her way In hours of trial and dismay. As if she heard the voice of God, Unharmed with naked feet she trod Upon the hot and burning stars, As on the glowing coals and bars, That were to prove her strength, and try Her holiness and her purity. Thus moving on, with silent pace, And triumph in her sweet, pale face, She reached the station of Orion. Aghast he stood in strange alarm ! And suddenly from his outstretched arm Down fell the red skin of the lion Into the river at his feet. His mighty club no longer beat The forehead of the bull; but he Reeled as of yore beside the sea, When, blinded by Oenopion, He sought the blacksmith at his forge And, climbing up the mountain gorge, Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun. Then, through the silence overhead, An angel with a trumpet said, "Forevermore, forevermore, The reign of violence is o'er !" And, like an instrument that flings Its music on another's strings, The trumpet of the angel cast Upon the heavenly lyre its blast, And on from sphere to sphere the words Re-echoed down the burning chords, -- "Forevermore, forevermore The reign of violence is o'er ! " Henry Wadsworth Longfellow =============================== Friends of Mine The stars are friends of mine. To lofty height, When falls the sombre canopy of night Upon a slumb'ring world, my spirit flies And treads with them the highway of the skies. We stride from world to world, while they rehearse The mighty chorus of the universe. We wander into fields of azure blue Sprinkled with diamonds of varied hue, Seek the lost Pleiad through skies aflame, And learn from her the secret of her shame. They mark the ways of men and shake with mirth At all the customs of this lowly Earth. Great wisdom and great mysteries they know. They tell the story of the Long Ago Ere Time was born, when Chaos had its sway, And Darkness held its mantle over Day. Why should I prize the boasted things of Earth When I can walk with stars and share their mirth, Their wisdom and their mysteries divine? I'd rather walk with stars. They're friends of mine. Richard Herbert Mann =============================== Meditation Under Stars What links are ours with orbs that are So resolutely far: The solitary asks, and they Give radiance as from a shield: Still at the death of day, The seen, the unrevealed. Implacable they shine To us who would of Life obtain An answer for the life we strain To nourish with one sign. Nor can imagination throw The penetrative shaft: we pass The breath of thought, who would divine If haply they may grow As Earth; have our desire to know; If life comes there to grain from grass, And flowers like ours of toil and pain; Has passion to beat bar, Win space from cleaving brain; The mystic link attain, Whereby star holds on star. Those visible immortals beam Allurement to the dream: Ireful at human hungers brook No question in the look. For ever virgin to our sense, Remote they wane to gaze intense: Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite The beating heart behind the ball of sight: Till we conceive their heavens hoar, Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey To that frigidity of brainless ray. Yet space is given for breath of thought Beyond our bounds when musing: more When to that musing love is brought, And love is asked of love's wherefore. 'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought: Her gift, her secret, here our tie. And not with her and yonder sky? Bethink you: were it Earth alone Breeds love, would not her region be The sole delight and throne Of generous Deity? To deeper than this ball of sight Appeal the lustrous people of the night. Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, It is our ravenous that quails, Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. The spirit leaps alight, Doubts not in them is he, The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right: Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, To feel it large of the great life they hold: In them to come, or vaster intervolved, The issues known in us, our unsolved solved: That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. So may we read and little find them cold: Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped; Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified By day to penetrate black midnight; see, Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we, The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, We who reflect those rays, though low our place, To them are lastingly allied. So may we read, and little find them cold: Not frosty lamps illumining dead space, Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. The fire is in them whereof we are born; The music of their motion may be ours. Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold The love that lends her grace Among the starry fold. Then at new flood of customary morn, Look at her through her showers, Her mists, her streaming gold, A wonder edges the familiar face: She wears no more that robe of printed hours; Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. George Meredith, 1888 ============================== Watchers of the Sky (excerpts) Prologue: The Observatory. ...Then...aimed at one small point of light One seeming insignificant star.... I, too, looked, And saw that insignificant spark of light Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn, A swimming world, a perfect rounded pearl, Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed, I saw a miracle, --right on its upmost edge A tiny mound of white that slowly rose, Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear And swam in heaven above its parent world To greet its three bright sister-moons. A moon, Of Jupiter, no more, but clearer far Than mortal eyes had seen before from earth, O, beautiful and clear beyond all dreams Was that one silver phrase of the starry tune Which Galileo's "old discoverer" first Dimly revealed, dissolving into clouds The imagined fabric of our universe. "Jupiter stands in heaven and will stand Though all the sycophants bark at him," he cried, Hailing the truth before he, too, went down, Whelmed in the cloudy wreckage of that dream.... II. Tycho Brahe ...Then Tycho showed his tables of the stars, Seven hundred stars, each noted in its place With exquisite precision, the result Of watching heaven for five-and-twenty years.... "In the time to come," Said Tycho Brahe, "perhaps a hundred years, Perhaps a thousand, when our own poor names Are quite forgotten, and our kingdoms dust, On one sure certain day, the torch-bearers Will, at some point of contact, see a light Moving upon this chaos. Though our eyes Be shut for ever in an iron sleep, Their eyes shall see the kingdom of the law, Our undiscovered cosmos. They shall see it,-- A new creation rising from the deep, Beautiful, whole. We are like men that hear Disjointed notes of some supernal choir. Year after year, we patiently record All we can gather. In that far-off time, A people that we have not known shall hear them, Moving like music to a single end." IV. Galileo ...He made his telescope; And, O how vividly that day comes back, When in their gorgeous robes the Senate stood Beside him on that high Venetian tower, Scanning the bare blue sea that showed no speck Of sail. Then, one by one, he bade them look; And one by one they gasped, "a miracle." Brown sails and red, a fleet of fishing boats, See how the bright foam bursts around their bows! See how the bare-legged sailors walk the decks! Then, quickly looking up, as if to catch The vision, ere it tricked them, all they saw Was empty sea again. Many believed That all was trickery, but he bade them note The colours of the boats, and count their sails. Then, in a little while, the naked eye Saw on the sky-line certain specks that grew, Took form and colour; and, within an hour, Their magic fleet came foaming into port.... ...They did not hear...when he hinted at his hope Of opening up the heavens for mankind With that new power of bringing far things near. My heart burned as I heard him; but they blinked Like owls at noonday.... Late that night...I followed him. He showed me, Looking along his outstretched hand, a star, A point of light above our olive-trees. It was the star called Jupiter. And then He bade me look again, but through his glass. I feared to look at first, lest I should see Some wonder never meant for mortal eyes. He, too, had felt the same, not fear, but awe, As if his hand were laid upon the veil Between this world and heaven. Then -- I, too, saw, Small as the smallest bead of mist that clings To a spider's thread at dawn, the floating disk Of what had been a star, a planet now, And near it, with no disk that eyes could see, Four needle-points of light, unseen before. "The moons of Jupiter," he whispered low, "I have watched them as they moved, from night to night; A system like our own, although the world Their fourfold lights and shadows make so strange Must -- as I think -- be mightier than we dreamed, A Titan planet. Earth begins to fade And dwindle; yes, the heavens are opening now. Perhaps up there, this night, some lonely soul Gazes at earth, watches our dawning moon, And wonders, as we wonder. Epilogue The records grow Unceasingly, and each new grain of truth Is packed, like radium, with whole worlds of light. The eclipses timed in Babylon help us now To clock that gradual quickening of the moon, Ten seconds in a century. Who that wrote On those clay tablets could foresee his gift To future ages; dreamed that the groping mind, Dowered with so brief a life, could ever range With that divine precision through the abyss? Who, when that good Dutch spectacle-maker set Two lenses in a tube, to read the time Upon the distant clock-tower of his church, Could dream of this, our hundred-inch, that shows The snow upon the polar caps of Mars Whitening and darkening as the seasons change? Or who could dream when Galileo watched His moons of Jupiter, that from their eclipses And from that change in their appointed times, Now late, now early, as the watching earth Farther or nearer on its orbit rolled, The immeasurable speed of light at last Should be reduced to measure? Could Newton dream When, through his prism, he broke the pure white shaft Into that rainbow band, how men should gather And disentangle ray by delicate ray The colours of the stars, -- not only those That burn in heaven, but those that long since perished, Those vanished suns that eyes can still behold, The strange lost stars whose light still reaches earth Although they died ten thousand years ago. Here, night by night, the innumerable heavens Speak to an eye more sensitive than man's, Write on the camera's delicate retina A thousand messages, lines of dark and bright That speak of elements unknown on earth. Alfred Noyes (1922) ============================== Stars Now in the West the slender moon lies low, And now Orion glimmers through the trees, Clearing the earth with even pace and slow, And now the stately-moving Pleiades, In that soft infinite darkness overhead Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread. And all the lonelier stars that have their place, Calm lamps within the distant southern sky, And planet-dust upon the edge of space, Look down upon the fretful world, and I Look up to outer vastness unafraid And see the stars which sang when earth was made. Marjorie Pickthall, (1883-1922) =============================== Alone and Drinking Under the Moon Amongst the flowers I am alone with my pot of wine drinking by myself; then lifting my cup I asked the moon to drink with me, its reflection and mine in the wine cup, just the three of us; then I sigh for the moon cannot drink, and my shadow goes emptily along with me never saying a word; with no other friends here, I can but use these two for company; in the time of happiness, I too must be happy with all around me; I sit and sing and it is as if the moon accompanies me; then if I dance, it is my shadow that dances along with me; while still not drunk, I am glad to make the moon and my shadow into friends, but then when I have drunk too much, we all part; yet these are friends I can always count on these who have no emotion whatsoever; I hope that one day we three will meet again, deep in the Milky Way. Li Po (Li Bai), (AD 701-762), translated by Rewi Alley ================================ Evening Star 'Twas noontide of summer, And mid-time of night; And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, thro' the light Of the brighter, cold moon, 'Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves. I gazed awhile On her cold smile; Too cold- too cold for me- There pass'd, as a shroud, A fleecy cloud, And I turned away to thee, Proud Evening Star, In thy glory afar, And dearer thy beam shall be; For joy to my heart Is the proud part Thou bearest in Heaven at night, And more I admire Thy distant fire, Than that colder, lowly light. Edgar Allan Poe, 1827 ================================ The Old Amateur What matters it, that weary and alone, I sit and think of things I might have done? What matters it that wife and children shun In me a dreamer, a mere rolling stone? What matters it that rustic neighbors fear In me a madman, all because I know The motions of the comets and the flow Of time, that travels on from year to year? What matters it? There are far better men To count the days and aeons, as they run, And weigh this planet that we dwell upon, But yet, I feel it matters somewhat, when - What matters it? - I see, across the wire, The transit of the star of my desire. R. Burnside Potter ================================ For the Conjunction of Two Planets We smile at astrological hopes And leave the sky to expert men Who do not reckon horoscopes But painfully extend their ken In mathematical debate With slide and photographic plate And yet, protest it if we will, Some corner of the mind retains The Medieval man who still Keeps watch upon those starry skeins And drives us out of doors at night To gaze at anagrams of light. Whatever register or law Is drawn in digits for these two Venus and Jupiter keep their awe, Wardens of brilliance, as they do Their dual circuit of the west - The brightest planet and her guest. Is any light so proudly thrust From darkness on our lifted faces A sign of something we can trust, Or is it that in starry places We see the things we long to see In fiery iconography? Adrienne Cecile Rich ==================================== Love of Night I love to rove amidst the starry height, To leave the little scenes of Earth behind, And let Imagination wing her flight On eagle pinions swifter than the wind. I love the planets in their course to trace; To mark the comets speeding to the Sun, Then launch into immeasurable space, Where, lost to human sight, remote they run. I love to view the Moon, when high she rides Amidst the heav'ns, in borrowed lustre bright, To fathom how she rules the subject tides, And how she borrows from the Sun her light. O! these are the wonders of th' Almighty hand, Whose wisdom first the circling orbits planned. T. Rodd ==================================== O Moon, Ronald Ross O Moon! When I look at thy beautiful face, Careening along through the boundaries of space The thought has quite frequently come to my mmd If ever I'll gaze on thy glorious behind. Ronald Ross ==================================== The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. Percy Bysshe Shelley ============================= Hymn to Selene Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy, Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth, From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, Far light is scattered--boundless glory springs; Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings The lampless air glows round her golden crown. But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone Under the sea, her beams within abide, Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide, Clothing her form in garments glittering far, And having yoked to her immortal car The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky A western Crescent, borne impetuously. Then is made full the circle of her light, And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then, A wonder and a sign to mortal men. The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power Mingled in love and sleep--to whom she bore Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are. Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, Fair-haired and favorable! thus with thee My song beginning, by its music sweet Shall make immortal many a glorious feat Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell. Unknown, circa 7th century B.C. Homeric Hymns Translated from Greek by Percy Bysshe Shelley ========================================= Arectyng my syght Arectyng my syght towarde the zodyake, The sygnes xii for to beholde a farre, When Mars retrogradant reuersyd his bak, Lord of the yere in his orbicular, Put vp his sworde, for he cowde make no warre, And whan Lucina plenarly did shyne, Scorpione ascendynge degrees twyse nyne. John Skelton, 1495 ============================================ Aldebaran at Dusk Thou art the star for which all evening waits-- O star of peace, come tenderly and soon, Nor heed the drowsy and enchanted moon, Who dreams in silver at the eastern gates Ere yet she brim with light the blue estates Abandoned by the eagles of the noon. But shine thou swiftly on the darkling dune And woodlands where the twilight hesitates. Above that wide and ruby lake to-West, Wherein the sunset waits reluctantly, Stir silently the purple wings of Night. She stands afar, upholding to her breast, As mighty murmurs reach her from the sea, Thy lone and everlasting rose of light. George Sterling, 1911 =========================== The Star Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are ! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the trav'ller in the dark, Thanks you for your tiny spark, He could not see which way to go, If you did not twinkle so. In the dark blue sky you keep, And often thro' my curtains peep, For you never shut your eye, Till the sun is in the sky. 'Tis your bright and tiny spark, Lights the trav'ller in the dark : Tho' I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Jane Taylor, 1806 =========================== Arcturus in Autumn When, in the gold October dusk, I saw you near to setting, Arcturus, bringer of spring, Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn, Having no pity on our withering; Oh, then I knew at last that my own autumn was upon me, I felt it in my blood, Restless as dwindling streams that still remember The music of their flood. There in the thickening dark a wind-bent tree above me Loosed its last leaves in flight-- I saw you sink and vanish, pitiless Arcturus, You will not stay to share our lengthening night. Sara Teasdale, 1926 ========================== Applied Astronomy He took me out to see the stars, That astronomic bore; He said there was two moons near Mars, While Jupiter had four. I thought of course he'd whisper soon What four fold bliss 'twould be To stroll beneath that fourfold moon On Jupiter with me. And when he spoke of Saturn's ring, I was convinced he'd say That was the very kind of thing To offer me some day. But in a tangent off he went To double stars. Now that Was most suggestive, so content And quite absorbed I sat. But no, he talked a dreary mess, Of which the only fraction That caught my fancy, I confess, Was "mutual attraction". I said I thought it very queer And stupid altogether, For stars to keep so very near And yet not come together. At that he smiled, and turned his head; I thought he'd caught the notion; He merely bowed good-night and said, Their safety lay in motion. Esther B. Tiffany ========================== The Star Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow, And wind and curl, and wink and smile, Shifting thy gate and guile; Though thy close commerce nought at all imbars My present search, for eagles eye not stars, And still the lesser by the best And highest good is blest; Yet, seeing all things that subsist and be, Have their commissions from divinity, And teach us duty, I will see What man may learn from thee. First, I am sure, the subject so respected Is well dispos'd, for bodies once infected, Deprav'd, or dead, can have with thee No hold, nor sympathy. Next, there's in it a restless, pure desire And longing for thy bright and vital fire, Desire that never will be quench'd, Nor can be writh'd, nor wrench'd. These are the magnets which so strongly move And work all night upon thy light and love, As beauteous shapes, we know not why, Command and guide the eye. For where desire, celestial, pure desire Hath taken root, and grows, and doth not tire, There God a commerce states, and sheds His secret on their heads. This is the heart he craves, and who so will But give it him, and grudge not, he shall feel That God is true, as herbs unseen Put on their youth and green. Henry Vaughan, 1650 ========================== Europa The full moon is so fierce that I can count the coconuts' cross-hatched shade on bungalows, their white walls raging with insomnia. The stars leak drop by drop on the tin plates of the sea almonds, and the jeering clouds are luminously rumpled as the sheets. The surf, insatiably promiscuous, groans through the walls; I feel my mind whiten to moonlight, altering that form which daylight unambiguously designed, from a tree to a girl's body bent in foam; then, treading close, the black hump of a hill, its nostrils softly snorting, nearing the naked girl splashing her naked breasts with silver. Both would have kept their proper distance still, if the chaste moon hadn't swiftly drawn the drapes of a dark cloud, coupling their shapes. She teases with those flashes, yes, but once you yield to human horniness, you see through all that moonshine what they really were, those gods as seed-bulls, gods as rutting swans an overheated farmhand's literature. Who ever saw her pale arms hook his horns, her thighs clamped tight in their deep-plunging ride, watched, in the hiss of the exhausted foam, her white flesh constellate to phosphorous as in salt darkness beast and woman come? Nothing is there, just as it always was, but the foam's wedge to the horizon-light, then, wire-thin, the studded armature, like drops still quivering on his matted hide, the hooves and horn-points anagrammed in stars. Derek Walcott, 1981 ============================ Cosmic Endings I dreamed I saw a galaxy explode, A massive spiral champion shorn of arms, And eons passed in seconds through my brain; The evolution of the cosmic wheel, The whirling stellar city born of gas, Had finished in a scattering of stars; Where stars had moved in orbits, night remained. I dreamed I saw the universe explode, The clusters and the superclusters dash In routed panic, as my eyes supposed, From one another; yet between their paths, Along their paths of flight, below, above, Passed vehicles on journeys none foresee: Imagination crumbled at the sight. I dreamed I saw an ultracluster turn, And watched the superclusters move on paths Within this mightiest of structured forms Of which the whole creation has been made; I saw the stars burn out, the galaxies Disperse and perish, till the turning form Sped like a cinder through infinity. Wade Wellman ==================================== When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired, and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. Walt Whitman, 1865 ================================ Blinded by the Light Look Ma, What's that star? It's just a passing plane. Grandma sighs so sadly, The nights just aren't the same; I'm sure they used to be darker; Wonder filled the skies; Where have all the stars gone? Could it be my failing eyes? Too many of our children Haven't known a true dark night; Will they ever see the beauty We're losing to the light? Sarah Williams ================================= The Old Astronomer to his Pupil Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet, When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet; He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how We are working to completion, working on from then to now. Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete, Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet, And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true, And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you. But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn, You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn, What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles; What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles! You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late, But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate. Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. Sarah Williams ========================== El Hombre It's a strange courage you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part! William Carlos Williams, 1917. ========================== Star-Gazers What crowd is this? what have we here! we must not pass it by; A Telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky: Long is it as a barber's pole, or mast of little boat, Some little pleasure-skiff, that doth on Thames's waters float. The Showman chooses well his place, 'tis Leicester's busy Square; And is as happy in his night, for the heavens are blue and fair; Calm, though impatient, is the crowd; each stands ready with the fee, And envies him that's looking;--what an insight must it be! Yet, Showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy Implement have blame, A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame? Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault? Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is yon resplendent vault? Is nothing of that radiant pomp so good as we have here? Or gives a thing but small delight that never can be dear? The silver moon with all her vales, and hills of mightiest fame, Doth she betray us when they're seen? or are they but a name? Or is it rather that Conceit rapacious is and strong, And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong? Or is it, that when human Souls a journey long have had And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad? Or must we be constrained to think that these Spectators rude, Poor in estate, of manners base, men of the multitude, Have souls which never yet have risen, and therefore prostrate lie? No, no, this cannot be;--men thirst for power and majesty! Does, then, a deep and earnest thought the blissful mind employ Of him who gazes, or has gazed? a grave and steady joy, That doth reject all show of pride, admits no outward sign, Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine! Whatever be the cause, 'tis sure that they who pry and pore Seem to meet with little gain, seem less happy than before: One after One they take their turn, nor have I one espied That doth not slackly go away, as if dissatisfied. William Wordsworth, 1806. =========================== Who but is Pleased to Watch the Moon on High Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty Renounces, till among the scattered clouds One with its kindling edge declares that soon Will reappear before the uplifted eye A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon, To glide in open prospect through clear sky. Pity that such a promise e'er should prove False in the issue, that yon seeming space Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move (By transit not unlike man's frequent doom) The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom. William Wordsworth, 1846 ================================