The Country of the Summer Stars!

Hello everyone –

Our final weekly Quotemail of June is devoted to what my ancient Welsh forebears would call “the country of the summer stars,” which I would interpret to include the study and exploration of the vast cosmos that we see every night of the year! :)

The month of July is a great time to reflect on humanity’s first decades of space exploration:

• July 20, 1969 = Apollo 11 (the first Moon landing)!
• July 20, 1976 = The Viking 1 probe lands on Mars.
• July 15, 2015 = First-ever flyby of the PLANET Pluto by the New Horizons probe.
• July 5, 2016 = The Juno probe arrives at Jupiter.

Here are some poems and reflections to help us remember the past and build the future of space exploration!

“Wanderers”

By Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Wide are the meadows of night,

And daisies are shining there,

Tossing their lovely dews,

Lustrous and fair;

And through these sweet fields go,

Wanderers amid the stars --

Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.

‘Tired in their silver, they move,

And circling, whisper and say,

“Fair are the blossoming meads of delight

Through which we stray.”

“Eldorado”

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,  

Had journeyed long,  

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—  

And o’er his heart a shadow—  

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength  

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—  

 ‘Shadow,’ said he,  

 ‘Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?’

‘Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,  

Ride, boldly ride,’

The shade replied,—

‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

THE LIGHT OF STARS

(A SECOND PSALM OF LIFE)

The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.

There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.

Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
Oh no! from that blue tent above
A hero's armor gleams.

And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.

O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.

Within my breast there is no light
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.

The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.

And thou, too, whosoever thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.

Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.

“On the Beach at Night”

By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

 

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

 

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

 

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

Fungi from Yuggoth (A Sonnet Cycle)

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

[Editor’s Note: Yuggoth is the name of Pluto in HPL’s “weird fiction” and poetic writings.]

Sonnet XIV: “Star-Winds”

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,

Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours

Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,

But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.

The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,

And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,

Heeding geometries of outer space,

While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know

What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents

And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,

Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.

Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,

A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

Quotemail will resume its regular fortnightly publication on Friday, July 13^th.

Happy 4^th of July! :)

Rob