University of Virginia Library

Come tell of the planets that roll round the sky,
And tell of the wisdom that guides them on high:
Come tell of their magnitudes, motions, and phases,
And which are the swiftestin running their races:
And tell of the moons, each in regular course,
And speak of their splendour, their distance, and force.

Hear then, child of earth, this wonderful story
Of God's works, and how they show forth His glory;
For the stars and the planets speak much of His might,
And, if we will listen, sing anthems by night.

And first, of the sun, flaming centre of all,
Many thousand times bigger than this little ball:
He turns on his axis in twenty-five days,
And sheds through the system a deluge of rays.
Now mark his dimensions, in round numbers given,
The earth's disc as one—his, a hundred and eleven.
Yet solid and dense is his substance, like ours,
Although from his vesture a flood of light pours,
His atmosphere shoots forth a torrent of flame,
An ocean still burning, yet ever the same!
Around him revolve—and perhaps there are more—
Of planets and satellites, say fifty-four:
To him they are globules, and lost in his glare:
He's a sultan, and they are the pearls in his hair.
First Mercury travels, so near the sun's beam,
As would turn our earth's metals and mountains to steam;
Yet he well likes his orbit, and round it he plays,
A few hours deducted, in eighty-eight days.
Then Venus, bright lamp of the evening and morn!
Lengthens twilight on earth by her dazzling horn.
How lucid her substance! how clear are her skies!
She sparkles a diamond as onward she hies!
The third place is held by this ocean-girt Earth,
The cloud-cover'd, wind-shaken place of our birth:
With its valleys of verdure, its corn-fields, and downs,
Its cities of uproar, its hamlets and towns,
Its volcanoes flinging forth fiery flakes,
Its snow-crested mountains, and glassy smooth lakes.
This earth, our abode, spins about on its poles;
And all would be dizzy to see how it rolls.
The moon too her circuit keeps constant with ours,
And in heaving our ocean, exhibits her powers.
A globe less than earth, and of murky red face,
Mars, revolves further off, and holds the fourth place;
Like earth, he has atmosphere, land too, and seas,
And there's snow at his poles when the wintry winds freeze.
All near the ecliptic, and hard to be traced,
Twenty-six little planets we then find are placed;
Some large one, it may be, in ages gone by,
May have burst into fragments, that roll through the sky.
Far remote from the sun, and yet greater than all,
Moves Jupiter vast, with his cloud-banded ball,
Eighty-seven thousand miles he measures across,
And he whirls on his poles with incredible force;
For in less than ten hours he sees night and day,
The stars of his sky, how they hurry away!
Yet his orbit employs him a nearly twelve years,
And satellites four hold the course that he steers.
Next Saturn, more distant, revolves with his ring—
Or crown, shall we call it, and he a grave king,
And beside this broad belt of silvery light,
Eight moons with pale lustre illumine his night.
Thirty years—little less, of our times are expended,
Before a course round his wide orbit is ended.
Uranus comes next, and 'twas fancied that he
Was the last, with his moons,—perhaps six, perhaps three,—
For his orbit employs him, so vast is its span,
All the years that are granted, at longest, to man:
But since—O the wonders that science has done!
We have found a new planet, so far from the sun,
That but for our glasses and long calculation,
We surely should not have discovered his station.
His name we call Neptune, and distant so far,
The sun can appear little more than a star.
But what shall we say of the comet that shows
Its ominous tail that with pallid light glows?
Whisp of vapour! that stretches from orbit to orbit,
And whirls round the sun, till the sun shall absorb it.
But solid or cloudy, these comets they move all,
In orbits elliptic, or very long oval.
And millions on millions of these errant masses
Flit about in the sky, though unseen by our glasses.
Such then is the system in which we revolve,
But who to pass onward through space shall resolve?
Or what wing of fancy can soar to the height
Where stars keep their stations—a phalanx of light?
Nor reason, nor fancy, that field can explore;
We pause in mute wonder, and God we adore.