King Alfred's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Who now is so unlearned among people of the world,
As not to wonder at the clouds upon the skies unfurl'd,
The swiftly rolling heavens and the racing of the stars,
How day by day they run around this mid earth in their cars:

Who then of men doth wonder not these glittering stars to see,
How some of them round wafted in shorter circles be,
And some are wanderers away and far beyond them all,
And one there is which worldly men the Wain with shafts do call.

These travel shorter than the rest, with less of sweep and swerve
They turn about the axle, and near the north-end curve,
On that same axle quickly round turns all the roomy sky,
And swiftly bending to the south untiring doth it fly.

109

(Then who is there in all the world that is not well amazed
Leave those alone who knew before the stars on which they gazed)
That many some-whiles on the heavens make a longer bend,
And some-whiles less, and sport about the axle of the End:

Or else much more they wander quickly round the midway spheres
Whereof is one, hight Saturn, who revolves in thirty years,
Böotes also, shining bright, another star that takes
His place again in thirty years of circle that he makes.

Who is there then of worldly men, to whom it doth not seem
A thing most strange that many stars go under the sea-stream,
As likewise some may falsely ween that also doth the sun,
But neither is this likeness true, nor yet that other one.

The sun is not at eventide, nor morning's early light
Nearer to the sea-stream than in the mid-day bright,
And yet it seems to men she goes her wandering sphere to lave
Then to her setting down she glides beneath the watery wave.

Who is there in the world will wonder not to gaze
Upon the full-moon on his way, bereft of all his rays,
When suddenly beneath the clouds he is beclad with black?
And who of men can marvel not at every planet's track?

Why shine they not before the sun in weather clear and bright,
As ever on the stilly sky before the moon at night?
And how is it that many men much wondering at such
Yet wonder not that men and beasts each other hate so much?

110

Right strange it is they marvel not how in the welkin oft
It thunders terribly, and then eftsoons is calm aloft,
So also stoutly dashes the wave against the shore
And fierce against the wave the wind uprises with a roar!

Who thinks of this? or yet again, how ice of water grows,
And how in beauty on the sky the bright sun hotly glows,
Then soon to water, its own kin, the pure ice runs away;
But men think that no wonder, when they see it every day.

This senseless folk is far more struck at things it seldom sees,
Though every wise man in his mind will wonder less at these;
Unstalworth minds will always think that what they seldom see
Never of old was made before, and hardly now can be.

But further yet, the worldly men by chance will think it came,
A new thing, if to none of them had ever happ'd the same;
Silly enough!—yet if of them a man begins to thirst
For learning many lists and lores that he had scorn'd at first,

And if for him the Word of life uncovers from his wit
The cloke of that much foolishness which overshadow'd it,
Then well of old I wot he would not wonder at things so
Which now to men most worthily and wonderfully show.