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They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:

The living throb in me, the dead revive.

Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,

Life glistens on the river of the death.

It folds us flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:

And this is the soul's haven to have felt.

George Meredith

WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D

ASTRONOMER

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer;

WH

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the 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 my

self,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time

to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

THE AUGUST SKY

PARKLING in splendor the Kite and the

S Dipper

Crossed the black welkin, and Scorpio's star

Lit on the runway stag, herdsman, and skipper

When I was dust, perhaps, bed-rock or spar.

Dust, fire, or dew, or the wind of the morning, Foam of some sea-coast unknown, on the

deep,

Somewhere I lived in creation's adorning Still, on the nights when Joan walked with her sheep.

What was I dreaming or where did I wander All through the Augusts before I could

know?

Crystal the Archer swept high over yonder: Close to the zenith burned Vega's blue snow.

Glory on glory the night's coronation

Circled the heavens before I was bornShone while I slept in the soul of creation Somewhere when Ruth wept for home in the corn.

Glory on glory the night's coronation

Throbbed in a beauty past dream or desire, Proud as I slept in the soul of creation — Breath of the morning or bed-rock or fire. Edith Wyatt

AS

NIGHT BEFORE TROY

FROM The Iliad

S when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart: So many a fire between the ships and stream Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, A thousand on the plain; and close by each Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn. Translation by Tennyson

NOX ET AURORA

FROM The Aeneid

TECDUM orbem medium Nox horis acta subibat:

N

Haud segnis strato surgit Palinurus et omnes Explorat ventos, atque auribus aëra captat; Sidera cuncta notat tacito labentia caelo, Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Tri

ones,

Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona.

Postquam cuncta videt caelo constare sereno,
Dat clarum e puppi signum; nos castra movemus,
Temptamusque viam et velorum pandimus alas.
Iamque rubescebat stellis Aurora fugatis,

Cum procul obscuros colles humilemque videmus
Italiam.

Vergil

THE INFINITE SHINING HEAVENS

T

HE infinite shining heavens

Rose and I saw in the night
Uncountable angel stars

Showering sorrow and light.

I saw them distant as heaven,
Dumb and shining and dead,
And the idle stars of the night
Were dearer to me than bread.

Night after night in my sorrow
The stars stood over the sea,

Till lo! I looked in the dusk

And a star had come down to me.

Robert Louis Stevenson

B

LAST SONNET

RIGHT star! would I were steadfast 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 steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

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

Q

HYMN TO CYNTHIA

UEEN and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright!

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;

Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright!

Lay thy bow of pearl apart

And thy crystal-shining quiver;

Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,

Goddess excellently bright!

Ben Jonson

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AN APRIL NIGHT

CLIMB with me, this April night,
The silver ladder of the moon-
All dew and danger and delight:
Above the poplars soon,

Into the lilac-scented sky,
Shall mount her maiden horn,
Frail as a spirit to the eye-

O climb with me till morn!

Richard Le Gallienne

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