I could not sleep for thinking of the sky
A comment from another blogger about an item of mine containing another bit of poetry led me to put up this astronomy-inspired poem, by the former Poet Laureate John Masefield. It’s from a cycle called Lollingdown Downs, and is actually the 12th poem in the sequence. I hope you like it.
I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.
If I could sail that nothing, I should cross
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing,
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing,
And rage into a sun with wandering planets
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed,
See his last light upon his last moon’s granites
Die to dark that would be night indeed.
Night where my soul might sail a million years
In nothing, not even death, not even tears.
October 21, 2009 at 10:18 am
Our last great Poet Laureate.
October 21, 2009 at 10:44 am
I think his poetry is very hit–and-miss, but his best work is brilliant. To say it is “uneven” is a compliment compared to those whose work is even, in the sense of being consistently tedious.
October 21, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Yes quite. Even a one-hit wonder has made one good record more than most artistes.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Faber book of Parodies, but it contains a good one of “Sea Fever” as well as predictable but still very funny AE Housman parodies.
Anton
October 22, 2009 at 11:15 am
Shakespearean sonnet: abab, cdcd, efef, gg, all in iambic pentameter.
Allegedly there are Shakespeare buffs who can carry on an arbitrary
conversation in blank verse (meter, often iambic pentameter, but no
rhyming scheme). In the spirit of Peter’s word game, I hereby challenge
the astronomical community to get a paper in blank verse published.
The first to do so, and the first to notice this, get special prizes. (I’m sure
Peter will donate a night at the opera or something similar.)
Select this link to see my son and me
At his first lesson in astrometry
October 22, 2009 at 11:23 am
In case anyone is wondering why the preview function doesn’t work for the link above: it works only if the web server in question is running on the standard port (and perhaps only if no port—even the standard one—is specified in the URL). This appears to be a WordPress bug. (Nonetheless, I plan to serve my pages up on the standard port as well, as soon as I have gotten more important things out of the way.)
October 22, 2009 at 11:26 am
I think a more realistic game would be an astronomical sonnet competition, along the lines of the Haiku and Clerihew ones. Would be a bit tougher though, even if I accepted Miltonic or Petrarchian forms as well as Shakespearian.
Incidentally, I’ve seen that particular poem in different forms, either broken into stanzas as I did it or as one single verse as most sonnets are. I don’t have the original published version so don’t know which is right.
October 22, 2009 at 11:30 am
Google has scanned some stuff; not sure what counts as “original published version”, but this makes it look like it was all written in one verse:
http://books.google.de/books?id=oOw6HSZBZmQC&pg=PA110&dq=%22I+could+not+sleep+for+thinking+of+the+sky%22&ei=yDPgSuTmLY2UyATz0N2OBw#v=onepage&q=%22I%20could%20not%20sleep%20for%20thinking%20of%20the%20sky%22&f=false
October 22, 2009 at 12:24 pm
OK, here goes. I make NO claims about this being the best, or even a good, astronomical sonnet, though until I see evidence to the contrary I claim it is the best which was written in less than 5 minutes.
The sky, the stars, the galaxies and more
Invite us all to probe into their depths
So many worlds we can and should explore
Though not much can be done without the maths
Astronomers, computers and the rest
All help us understand the world outside
Though many will avoid them like the pest
If they think they take too much time to bide
But who, today, has seen the heavens clear
Not blocked, polluted nor obscured by clouds
For all those unfortunates far near
The planetarium still draws the crowds
And even with an astronom’cal bent
One can become the Master of the Mint
October 22, 2009 at 12:36 pm
In any case the structure is clearer if you separate the components. I think that’s probably the best way for beginners to write a Sonnet.
October 22, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Phillip’s link would not display for me (Google blocked it for copyright reasons). An open access collection of John Masefield’s poems can be found at http://www.archive.org/stream/collectedpoems00maseuoft, with the poem in question on page 407.
October 23, 2009 at 2:37 pm
[...] is a meditation on it. It seems to me to be a natural companion to the poem by John Masefield I posted earlier in the week, but I don’t know whether they share a common inspiration in the Psalm or just in the [...]
October 23, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Philip: I’m impressed. I hope that doesn’t sound patronising, because I don’t mean it to be – Anton
October 26, 2009 at 10:25 am
Copyright? Interesting that Google blocked the link due to copyright
restrictions, since I found the page in question through Google.
I’m a bit surprised that mine remains the only contribution!
“In any case the structure is clearer if you separate the components. I think that’s probably the best way for beginners to write a Sonnet.” It’s also good advice when learning image processing. I think I actually hear a radio astronomer utter that first sentence when CLEANing a map.
October 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] on from Philip Helbig’s challenge a couple of posts ago, I decided to commemorate the occasion comments with an appropriate sonnet, inspired by [...]
November 3, 2009 at 3:27 am
Ok whilst not strictly adhering to the above, I quite like this:
The integral sec y dy
From zero to one-sixth of pi
Is the log to base e
Of the square root of three
Times the sixty-fourth power of i
December 16, 2009 at 10:58 am
[...] sure are going to sacrificed in large numbers to balance the books. It reminded me a bit about a poem I posted a while ago: I could not sleep for thinking of the … [...]
October 25, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I think it’s number 5 in the sequence… page 12 though. And I agree, John Masefield is really a great poet.
July 7, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for posting this: it’s one of my favourite sonnets. You’re missing a word in the twelfth line, though: it’s not “Die to dark” but “Die to a dark” (otherwise it would be a syllable short). Note the emphasis caused by this line’s reversed initial foot (“DIE to a DARK”…)