A Salute to the Winter Stars -- and Mars!

Hello everyone –

 

Here at last is my long-delayed tribute to the winter stars, including a salute to the NASA team that put the Perseverance rover on Mars last week!

 

FROM THE ORPHIC HYMNS

Editor’s Note: The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus – celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their prescientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the forces of nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways that they do.

 

Orphic Hymn #6: To the Stars

With holy voice I call the stars on high,

Pure sacred lights and genii of the sky.

Celestial stars, the progeny of Night,

In whirling circles beaming far your light,

Refulgent rays around the heavens ye throw,

Eternal fires, the source of all below.

With flames significant of Fate ye shine,

And aptly rule for men a path divine.

In seven bright zones ye run with wandering flames,

And heaven and earth compose your lucid frames:

With course unwearied, pure and fiery bright

Forever shining through the veil of Night.

Hail twinkling, joyful, ever wakeful fires!

Propitious shine on all my just desires;

These sacred rites regard with conscious rays,

And end our works devoted to your praise.

 

FROM THE POEMS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT (1890-1937)

Editor’s Note: H. P. Lovecraft is regarded by literary scholars as the “Edgar Allan Poe” of the 20^th century. He was an imaginative author of “weird fiction” – a genre that combines science fiction, fantasy, and horror – and also an accomplished poet. His work has inspired, among others, the creators/writers of Babylon 5 and Doctor Who.

 

“Polaris” (1920)

 

Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,

Six and twenty thousand years

Have revolved, and I return

To the spot where now I burn.

Other stars anon shall rise

To the axis of the skies;

Stars that soothe and stars that bless

With a sweet forgetfulness:

Only when my round is o’er

Shall the past disturb thy door.

 

“Winter Stars” (1920)

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 

I went out at night alone;

The young blood flowing beyond the sea

Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings —

I bore my sorrow heavily.

 

But when I lifted up my head

From shadows shaken on the snow,

I saw Orion in the east

Burn steadily as long ago.

 

From windows in my father’s house,

Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

I watched Orion as a girl

Above another city’s lights.

 

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

All things are changed, save in the east

The faithful beauty of the stars.

 

“Where My Heart Will Take Me”

(Theme from STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE)

Lyrics by Diane Warren

 

It's been a long road, getting from there to here.

It's been a long time, but my time is finally near. 

And I will see my dream come alive at last. I will touch the sky.

And they're not gonna hold me down no more, no they're not gonna change my mind.

 

Cause I've got faith of the heart.

I'm going where my heart will take me. 

I've got faith to believe. I can do anything. 

I've got strength of the soul. And no one's gonna bend or break me. 

I can reach any star. I've got faith, faith of the heart.

 

You can watch the opening sequence of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE here, featuring the theme song as performed by Russell Watson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPn-lTytfGo

 

Until next time – keep looking up! 😊

 

Rob

 

Happy Lunar New Year on Abe Lincoln's Birthday!

Hello everyone –

 

Next Friday, February 12, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year in the traditional Chinese calendar. The New Year (or Spring Festival) usually occurs on the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice (December 21 or 22). And so, on Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday holiday, the Year of the Ox will begin as the Chinese calendar year 4719 dawns in East Asia and around the globe.

 

To celebrate the Lunar New Year, I have selected two poems for you to enjoy. “Ring Out, Wild Bells” is a New Year poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and “Kubla Khan” (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) celebrates the splendor of medieval China under the aegis of Kublai Khan (reigned 1260-1294), the grandson of Genghis Khan. Readers may find Tennyson’s sentiments especially relevant as we move forward together after a contentious political transition and continue to fight the global Covid-19 pandemic. A beautiful musical rendition of “Ring Out, Wild Bells” by the Crofts Family can be found @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTjo62ehrd4.

 

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” (1850)

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

 

“Kubla Khan” a/k/a “Xanadu” (1816)

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her daemon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced;

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

 

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me,

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 

Happy Lunar New Year to one and all!

 

Rob 😊