C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Heavens (The)

But the day is spent;
And stars are kindling in the firmament,
To us how silent—though like ours, perchance,
Busy and full of life and circumstance.

Rogers.

Heaven’s ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Thro’ which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world.

Shelley.

This prospect vast, what is it?—weigh’d aright,
’Tis nature’s system of divinity,
And every student of the night inspires.
’Tis elder scripture, writ by God’s own hand:
Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.

Young.

The blue, deep, glorious heavens!—I lift mine eye,
And bless thee, O my God! that I have met
And own’d thine image in the majesty
Of their calm temple still! that never yet
There hath thy face been shrouded from my sight
By noontide blaze, or sweeping storm of night!
I bless thee, O my God!

Mrs. Hemans.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven;
If in yow bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires—’t is to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have nam’d themselves a star.

Byron.

One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine;
And light us deep into the deity;
How boundless in magnificence and might!
O what a confluence of ethereal fires,
From urns unnumber’d, down the steep of heaven,
Streams to a point, and centres in my sight!
Nor tarries there; I feel it at my heart:
My heart, at once, it humbles, and exalts;
Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies.

Young.

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