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  #1  
Unread 02-15-2005, 04:57 AM
Margaret Moore Margaret Moore is offline
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A poem of Greg di Prinzio's on TDE set me thinking about others which address astronomical themes. (Have a feeling we had a similar thread a year or two ago but it's probably been deleted.)

Here's one I rather like by the Irish poet, Moya Cannon

NIGHT

Coming back from Cloghane
in the sudden frost
of a November night,
I was ambushed
by the river of stars.

Disarmed by lit skies
I had utterly forgotten
this arc of darkness,
this black night
where the frost-hammered stars
were notes thrown from a chanter,
crans of light.

So I wasn't ready
for the dreadful glamour of Orion
as he struck out over Barr dTri gCom
in his belt of stars.

At Gleann na nGealt
his bow of stars
was drawn against my heart.

What could I do?

Rather than drive into a pitch-black ditch
I got out twice,
leaned back against the car
and stared up at our windy, untidy loft
where old people had flung up junk
they'd thought might come in handy,
ploughs, ladles, bears, lions, a clatter of heroes,
a few heroines, a path for the white cow, a swan
and, low down, almost within reach,
Venus, completely unfazed by the frost.

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  #2  
Unread 02-15-2005, 07:08 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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That feels almost like two separate poems to me. I love the junk thrown up into the sky bit.

I think we may have had a scientific poetry thread that had astronomy in it. Am not sure about an astronomy thread per se... I'll rumage around in the attic and see.

Housman has quite a few poems that hinge on astronomy. He was of course the editor of the astronomical poet Manilius, but apparently his interest in the heavens dates from early childhood.

This is one of my favorite--though lesser-known--AEH poems. (Also quite unusual for him in being ip.) You have to have a sort of 3-D mental picture of the earth and the sun's light hitting it to fully appreciate the imagery.

Revolution

West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day's beamy banner up the east is borne,
Spectres and fears, the nighmare and her foal,
Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.

But over sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.

See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.
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  #3  
Unread 02-15-2005, 09:48 AM
Kevin Andrew Murphy Kevin Andrew Murphy is offline
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And of course there's this one:


When I heard the learned 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 wandered off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman
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  #4  
Unread 02-15-2005, 10:51 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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One of my favorite poems:

On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
by Robert Frost

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.

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  #5  
Unread 02-15-2005, 10:57 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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And of course:

BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEDFAST
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour 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,
Pillowed 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 in death.
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  #6  
Unread 02-15-2005, 05:15 PM
Mark Allinson Mark Allinson is offline
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Now here is FV working at its best:

The Great Explosion

Robinson Jeffers


The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down ; there is no
way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each
other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night ; and far off the outer nebulae
like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.
No wonder we are so fascinated with
fireworks
And our huge bombs : it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
the howling fireblast that we were born from.

But the whole sum of the energies
That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will
gather again and pile up, the power and the glory --
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole : the
whole universe beats like a heart.
Peace in our time was never one of God's promises ; but back
and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His
terrible life.

He is beautiful beyond belief.
And we, God's apes -- or tragic children -- share in the beauty.
We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.
He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments, : this is the God who does not care
and will never cease. Look at the seas there
Flashing against this rock in the darkness --look at the
tide-stream stars -- and the fall of nations -- and dawn
Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to
meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.
The great explosion is probably only a metaphor -- I know not
-- of faceless violence, the root of all things.


Robinson Jeffers


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  #7  
Unread 02-15-2005, 09:11 PM
Catherine Tufariello Catherine Tufariello is offline
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Great topic for a thread!


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 dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.


--W.H. Auden
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  #8  
Unread 02-16-2005, 12:57 AM
Katy Evans-Bush Katy Evans-Bush is offline
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Stargazing

The night is fine and dry. It falls and spreads
the cold sky with a million opposites
that, for a moment, seem like a million souls
and soon, none, and then, for as long time,
one. Then of course it spins. What better to do
than string out over the infinite dead spaces
the ancient beasts and spearmen of the human
mind, and, if not the real ones, new ones?

But, try making them clear to one you love -
whoever is standing by you is one you love
when pinioned by the stars - you will find it quite
impossible, but like her more for thinking
she sees that constellation.

After the wave of pain, you will turn to her
and, in an instant, change the universe
to a sky you were glad you came outside to see.

This is the act of all the descended gods
of every age and creed: to weary of all
that never ends, to take a human hand,
and go back into the house.

Glyn Maxwell
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  #9  
Unread 02-16-2005, 02:31 AM
J.A. Crider J.A. Crider is offline
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Can't remember your favorite astronomical poem? Tired of the same old, used one? Or just need an upgrade? I just found this wonderful website, Noxoculi:

http://pages.infinit.net/noxoculi/poetry.html

Scroll down a little and there's a nice selection of (old and newer) poems in English.


John



[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited February 16, 2005).]
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  #10  
Unread 02-18-2005, 08:41 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I don't know if these Sesame Street lyrics hold up on their own, but they're pretty great when Aaron Neville joins Ernie in singing them:

Visit The Moon

Oh I'd like to visit the moon
on a rocket ship high in the air.
Yes, I'd like to visit the moon,
but I don't think I'd like to live there.

Though I'd like to look down on the earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love,
so though I would like it for one afternoon
I don't want to live on the moon.

I'd like to travel under the sea.
I would meet all the fish everywhere.
Yes I'd like to travel under the sea,
but I don't think I'd like to live there.

I would stay for a day there if I had my wish,
but there's not much to do when your friends are all fish,
and an oyster and clam aren't real family.
No, I don't want to live in the sea.

I'd like to visit the jungle, hear the lions roar,
go back in time and meet a dinosaur.
There's so many strange places I'd like to be,
but none of them permanently.

So if I should visit the moon,
I would dance on a moonbeam and then
I would make a wish on a star
and I'd wish I was home once again.

Though I'd like to look down on the earth from above,
I would miss all the places and people I love.
So though I may go, I'll be coming home soon,
'cause I don't want to live on the moon.
No I don't want to live on the moon.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited February 18, 2005).]
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