Celebrating Perseverance on Mars!

 

Hello everyone –

 

In this edition of Quotemail, we celebrate NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed safely on Mars on February 18^th to begin its intrepid mission: to seek out signs of life (both past and present) on the Red Planet, Mars. Here are a few poems to help us commemorate this great achievement as we look forward to new discoveries and new questions along the way.

 

“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.”

 

“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!

 

THE LIGHT OF STARS

(A SECOND PSALM OF LIFE)

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

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.

 

Until next time –

Rob 😊