ASTRONOMY
It does at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team.
And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern.
At night astronomers agree.
My lord, they say five moons were seen tonight:
Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about
The other four in wondrous motion.
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk, and wot not what they are.
And teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night.
There's some ill planet reigns;
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable.
O how loud
It calls devotion! genuine growth of night!
Devotion! daughter of Astronomy!
An undevout Astronomer is mad.
AUDACITY
(see also Courage)
La crainte fit les dieux; l'audace a fait les rois.
Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings.
Questa lor tracotanza nǫn è nuova.
This audacity of theirs is not new.
De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace.
Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.
Audax omnia perpeti
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas.
The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.
Audendo magnus tegitur timor.
By audacity, great fears are concealed.
AUGUST
The August cloud *** suddenly
Melts into streams of rain.
In the parching August wind,
Cornfields bow the head,
Sheltered in round valley depths,
On low hills outspread.
Dead is the air, and still! the leaves of the locust and walnut
Lazily hang from the boughs, inlaying their intricate outlines
Rather on space than the sky,—on a tideless expansion of slumber.
AURORA
Aurora had but newly chased the night,
And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light.
But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn,
With rosy lustre purpled o'er the lawn.
Night's son was driving
His golden-haired horses up;
Over the eastern firths
High flashed their manes.
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying.
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards.
The wolves have prey'd: and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phœbus, round about,
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.
At last, the golden orientall gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre,
And Phœbus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre;
And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
You cannot rob me of free nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face.
