Plutonian Poetry!

Dear Members, Alumni, & Friends of the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership Team (JSALT):

As anyone who has visited my Twitter account (http://twitter.com/Robt_H_Chappell) may have noticed, the New Horizons mission to Pluto has occupied my imagination quite a bit during the month of July. The space probe’s exhilarating discoveries will certainly rewrite most of our textbooks on planetology for years to come! So what better time is there to read some Plutonian-inspired poetry? Here’s a representative sample.

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!

“If Only We Had Taller Been”

By Ray Bradbury (November 1971)

Written in Commemoration of the Mariner 9 Space Probe Achieving Orbit Around Mars

(Recited at New Horizons Mission Control in July 2015)

The fence we walked between the years

Did bounce us serene

It was a place half in the sky where

In the green of leaf and promising of peach

We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky

If we could reach and touch, we said,

'Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead

We ached and almost touched that stuff;

Our reach was never quite enough.

If only we had taller been

And touched God's cuff, His hem,

We would not have to go with them

Who've gone before,

Who, short as us, stood as they could stand

And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land

Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.

But they, like us, were standing in a hole

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall

Across the Void, across the Universe and all?

And, measured out with rocket fire,

At last put Adam's finger forth

As on the Sistine Ceiling,

And God's hand come down the other way

To measure man and find him Good

And Gift him with Forever's Day?

I work for that

Short man, Large dream

I send my rockets forth between my ears

Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years

Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:

We've reached Alpha Centauri!

We're tall, O God, we're tall!

“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.

Editor’s Note: 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

Ad astra per aspera! (Latin) = To the stars through striving!

(NASA’s Official Motto)

Until next time –

Rob :)