Sky, Stars and Universe

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

If the stars should appear just one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore!

The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God’s mind—a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise.

At whose sight all the stars Hide their diminish’d heads. 6

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth.

Under the wide and starry sky

These blessed candles of the night.

And the gilded car of day, His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky.

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth; While all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

If the Sun and Moon should doubt,

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way.

The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapor sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon ’t.

And fast by hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

The planets in their stations list’ning stood, While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung, Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in The great Creator from his work return’d Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world.

And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.