I am glad to know that you too have a good opinion of that poem.[6] One should know about one's own work. Most writers think their work good, but good writers know it. Pardon me if I underrated your astronomical knowledge. My belief was based on your use of those names. I never met with the spelling "Betelgeux"; and even if it is correct and picturesque I'd not use it if I were you, for it does not quite speak itself, and you can't afford to jolt the reader's attention from your thought to a matter of pronunciation. In my student days we, I am sure, were taught to say Procy'on. I don't think I've heard it pronounced since, and I've no authority at hand. If you are satisfied with Pro'cyon I suppose it is that. But your pronunciation was Aldeb'aran or your meter very crazy indeed. I asked (with an interrogation point) if it were not Aldeba'ran--and I think it is. Fomalhaut I don't know about; I thought it French and masculine. In that case it would, I suppose, be "ho," not "hote." [6] "The Testimony of the Suns." Don't cut out that stanza, even if "clime" doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with duration. The stanza is good enough to stand a blemish. "Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim"--I was wrong in substituting "that" for "who," not observing that it would make it ambiguous. I merely yielded to a favorite impulse: to say "that" instead of "who," and did not count the cost. Don't cut out _any_ stanza--if you can't perfect them let them go imperfect. "Without or genesis or end." "Devoid of birth, devoid of end." These are not so good as "Without beginning, without end";--I submit them to suggest a way to overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the second "without." I should not like "impend." Yes, I vote for Orion's _sword_ of suns. "Cimetar" sounds better, but it is more specific--less generic. It is modern--or, rather, less ancient than "sword," and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land. But "sword"--there were swords before Homer. And I don't think the man who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and yet--"cimetar of suns" is "mighty catchin'." No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus: "Not as two erring spheres together grind, With monstrous ruin, in the vast of space, Destruction born of that malign embrace-- Their hapless peoples all to death consigned--" etc. I've been a star-gazer all my life--from my habit of being "out late," I guess; and the things have always seemed to me _alive_. The change in the verses _ad meum_, from "_thy_ clearer light" to "_the_ clearer light" may have been made modestly or inadvertently--I don't recollect. It is, of course, no improvement and you may do as you please. I'm uniformly inadvertent, but intermittently modest. * * * * *