Astronomy and the Poets

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

FOOL Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

KING LEAR Because they are not eight?

FOOL Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

I am like a slip of comet,Scarce worth discovery, in some corner seenBridging the slender difference of two stars,Come out of space, or suddenly engender'd

By heady elements, for no man knows;But when she sights the sun she grows and

sizesAnd spins her skirts out, while her central starShakes its cocooning mists; and so she comes

To fields of light; millions of travelling raysPierce her; she hangs upon the flame-cased

sun,And sucks the light as full as Gideons's fleece:

But then her tether calls her; she falls off,And as she dwindles shreds her smock of goldBetween the sistering planets, till she comes

To single Saturn, last and solitary;And then she goes out into the cavernous dark.

So I go out: my little sweet is done:I have drawn heat from this contagious sun:

To not ungentle death now forth I run.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

from Year of Meteors [1859-60]

… Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants, Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good--year of forebodings! Year of comets and meteors transient and strange--lo! even here one equally transient and strange! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, What am I myself but one of your meteors?