Mild Music of the Spheres
…………Ye meaner beauties of the night
…………..That poorly satisfy our eyes
…………More by your number than your light
……………You common people of the skies
…………..What are you when the moon shall rise?
~ Sir Henry Wotton
Once men were ignorant about the stars.
The thought was that these heavenly lights were calm
And numbered like a well-watched flock, and Mars
And other noble planets were a psalm
Of constancy as patterned as the verse
Of David. Poets thought the moon and sun
Forced constellations out with glory’s curse.
The stars became mere commoners to stun
Away with godlike light. There was no sense
That suns or galaxies collapse or smash
In trauma or a star might so condense
To be a black hole in a fatal flash.
..Unknown then was that Jupiter’s sky roils
….With storms more large than earth—and Venus broils.