And can no less than the world's end,[1]
Or nature's funeral, portend.
With that, he fell again to pry
Thro' perspective more wistfully,
When, by mischance, the fatal string, 465
That kept the tow'ring fowl on wing,
Breaking, down fell the star. Well shot,
Quoth Whachum, who right wisely thought
He'd levell'd at a star, and hit it;
But Sidrophel, more subtle-witted, 470
Cry'd out. What horrible and fearful
Portent is this, to see a star fall!
It threatens nature, and the doom
Will not be long before it come!
When stars do fall, 'tis plain enough[2] 475
The day of judgment's not far off;
As lately 'twas reveal'd to Sedgwick,[3]
And some of ns find out by magick:
Then, since the time we have to live
In this world's shorten'd, let us strive 480
To make our best advantage of it,
And pay our losses with our profit.
This feat fell out not long before
The Knight, upon the forenam'd score,
In quest of Sidrophel advancing, 485
Was now in prospect of the mansion;
- ↑ "At sight whereof the people stand aghast,
But the sage wizard telles, as he has redd,
That it importunes deth, and doleful dreryhed."
Fairy Queen, Book iii. Canto i. st. 16. - ↑ This notion of falling stars was almost universal, until science showed the phænomenon to be both common and periodical. The theory is that these bodies are fragments traversing the planetary spaces, and at given times are drawn by the earth's attraction to her surface.
- ↑ Will. Sedgwick was a whimsical fanatic preacher, alternately a Presbyterian, an Independent, and an Anabaptist, settled by the Parliament in the city of Ely. He pretended much to revelations, and was called the apostle of the Isle of Ely. He gave out that the approach of the day of judgment had been disclosed to him in a vision; and going to the house of Sir Francis Russel, in Cambridgeshire, where he found several gentlemen at bowls, he warned them all to prepare themselves, for the day of judgment would be some day in the next week; whence he was nick-named Doomsday Sedgwick.
