POETS, by and large, are ambivalent about astronomy. They see the stars and planets as a private reservoir of inspiration, their well of metaphor, their source of simile, and look askance at those whose obsessive cosmic curiosity would remove the ancient veils of mystery, one by one.
Thomas Hardy was a frequent dipper in this astronomic well. He used a lunar eclipse, for example, to good effect to epitomise the insignificance of man:
And can immense mortal ity but throw
So small a shade, and
Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
And Tennyson in The Princess used the metaphorical possibilities of shooting stars to good effect:
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
But as far back as 1579, Edmund Spenser could be seen to sound a warning note:
He that strives to touch the stars
Oft stumbles at a straw.
Then, 200 years later, Wordsworth became almost churlish on the subject. After William Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781, peering through telescopes became widely popular, but according to the future poet laureate, the results were often disappointing:
Whate'er the cause, tis sure that they who pry and pore
Have little gain, and seem to be.
less happy than before,
One after one they take their turn - nor have I one espied
That doth not slackly go away, as if dissatisfied.
Even Alfred Tennyson was less than enthusiastic about the discovery of Neptune in 1846, wondering in The Memoriam if it was.
A time to sicken and to swoon
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?
But sometimes the latest astronomical discoveries themselves provide the lyricist with inspiration, and often in the most unlikely contexts. The rock group Blur, for example, in their relatively recent album Parklife, have a track called Far Out that provides an extensive litany of the very latest other worldly satellites:
I spy in the night sky, don't I,
Phoebe, Io, Elara, Leda, Cal listo, Sinope,
Janus, Dione, Portia, so many moons,
Quiet in the sky at night, hot in the Milky Way.