What though in solemn silence all Joseph Addison LUCIDA TEMPLA DEORUM N caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt, IN Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur, Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes, LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT Na starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. O Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. George Meredith B THE STAR SIRIUS RIGHT Sirius! that when Orion pales To dotlings under moonlight still art keen With cheerful fervor of a warrior's mien Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales; Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, Reducing many lustrous to the lean: Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre. George Meredith SHA WINTER HEAVENS HARP is the night, but stars with frost alive, Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. It is a night to make the heavens our home More than the nest whereto apace we strive. Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. 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, And this is the soul's haven to have felt. George Meredith WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER THEN I heard the learn'd astronomer; WHE 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 skip per 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 born – Shone 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 ECDUM orbem medium Nox horis acta subibat: Ν NE Haud segnis strato surgit Palinurus et omnes Explorat ventos, atque auribus aëra captat; Sidera cuncta notat tacito labentia caelo, Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones, Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona. Postquam cuncta videt caelo constare sereno, Cum procul obscuros colles humilemque videmus Vergil |