[meteorite-list] Happy Easter Everyone and Everywhere! ... RMR

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 20:22:12 -0500
Message-ID: <13e601c7797c$566abd90$0e2f4842_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Bernd, List


    Not just Easter but every day, poems about
meteors, meteorites, shooting stars, falling stars...


Oh, earthly pomp is but a dream,
And like a meteor's short-lived gleam...
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne (1805-1964)



I would rather be a meteor,
Every atom of me in magnificent glow,
Than a sleepy and permanent planet.
    -Jack London (1876-1916)



a shooting star
streaks the sky
making it real

clear night -
in the space of a smile
the meteor is gone

    -Giovanni Malito (1957-2003)



The Falling Star

I saw a star slide down the sky.
Blinding the north as it went by.
Too burning and too quick to hold.
Too lovely to be bought or sold.
Good only to make wishes on.
And then forever to be gone.

    -Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)



Space is Big.
Space is Dark.
It's hard to find
A place to park.

    -Sidney Harris (American Scientist magazine, 1975)
    (OK, no meteorites, but explains why they fall...?)



Shooting Stars

When stars get loosened
in their sockets,
they shoot off through
the night like rockets.
But though I stay
and watch their trip
and search where they
have seemed to slip,
I never yet have found a CHIP
to carry in my pockets.

    -Aileen Fisher (1906-2002),



The Fallen Star

A star is gone! a star is gone !
    There is a blank in Heaven ;
One of the cherub choir has done
    His airy course this even.

He sat upon the orb of fire
    That hung for ages there,
And lent his music to the choir
    That haunts the nightly air.

But when his thousand years are pass'd,
    With a cherubic sigh
He vanish'd with his car at last,
    For even cherubs die !

Hear how his angel-brothers mourn --
    The minstrels of the spheres --
Each chiming sadly in his turn
    And dropping splendid tears.

The planetary sisters all
    Join in the fatal song,
And weep this hapless brother's fall,
    Who sang with them so long.

But deepest of the choral band
    The Lunar Spirit sings,
And with a bass-according hand
    Sweeps all her sullen strings.

>From the deep chambers of the dome
    Where sleepless Uriel lies,
His rude harmonic thunders come
    Mingled with mighty sighs.

The thousand car-bourne cherubim,
    The wandering eleven,
All join to chant the dirge of him
    Who fell just now from Heaven.

    -George Darley (1795-1846)



Four Haiku composed under a meteor shower

Sky's epidermis
keeps frigid vacuum from Earth.
The atmosphere burns...

Curious space rocks
want underneath the sky's skin.
Fists of fiery light.

The sky punishes
the intruders, attacking
with incandescence.

Below, we humans
pause in the swarm of our life;
watch the blazing trails.

    -S. D. Mullaney




Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall

Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
>From all the star-sown sky...

    -A. E. Housman (1859-1936)



Go and Catch a Falling Star

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet ;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet ;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

    -John Donne, (1579-1631, published 1633)
    (Note that "catch a falling star" is
    a metaphor for the impossible task.)



Year of Meteors (1859-60)

Year of meteors! brooding year !
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,
I would sing how an old man*, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in
Virginia,
(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,
I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with
age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted the scaffold;)
I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their
cargoes,
The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with
immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,
Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,
And you would I sing, fair stripling ! welcome to you from me, young prince
of England!
(Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your cortege of
nobles?
There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment ;)
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,
Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet
long,
Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to
sing;
Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,
Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our
heads,
(A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our
heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing-with gleams from them would gleam and
patch these chants,
Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good-year of forebodings!
Year of comets and meteors transient and strange-lo! even here one equally
transient and strange!

As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,
What am I myself but one of your meteors?

    -Walt Whitman
    (* John Brown)



Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de>
To: <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 4:23 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Happy Easter Everyone and Everywhere! ... RMR


*RMR = Remotely Meteorite-Related ;-)


The Daffodils (by William Wordsworth)

Composed 1804 - Published 1807

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine* <= RMR
And twinkle on the milky way,* <= RMR
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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Received on Sat 07 Apr 2007 09:22:12 PM PDT