Soaring ’mid highest noon her lucid beam, Illumes with mellow light, rock, hill, valley, And nodding wood, and rivers flowing gleam, And white sail seen in calm serenity, And limpid spring heard murm’ring pleasantly; While curfew’s chime swings loud from distant shore, Where silvery moonbeams fall on tow’r and tree, Nor voice of multitude like ocean’s roar Disturbs the tranquil night, Salvator’s soft-like hour. CLXXXIX. See yon expanse fretted with golden fires, In mazy dance their several orbits wend Harmonious round, that never stops nor tires, A flight immeasurable that knows no end, In number infinite, that cannot blend! Each nicely balanced by attractions pow’r And centrifugal force, their course attend; Projectile hurled on their stupendous tour, Orb following orb sublime in one eternal sphere. CXC. Yon planet see, nearest the orb of day, Mercury of sparkling red, great Hermes named; And Venus fair, with white and purest ray; Our Earth, and Mars with fiery aspect flamed, Emblem of war, that terror, discord, claimed; And Jupiter, resplendent orb of light, With his attendant moons and belts so famed; Ringed Saturn, dimly red with sluggish flight, Whose children Rhea bore devouring quenched in night. CXCI. And far beyond yon outer circle’s range The Georgium Sidus wheels thro’ space immense; And more, eccentric Comet’s orbit strange, That frights the nations as it flames intense, The brandished scimitar of Omnipotence, Or shoots a train that arc of heav’n doth span, Onward through space; nor back returneth hence, For philosophic eye again to scan, Till ages thrice have swept the myriad race of man. CXCII. See yon faint stream of light the heav’ns embrace, The galaxy or milky-way so hight, Like nebula spread infinite o’er space, Studded in clusters thick as Bootes bright; The greater and the lesser Bear of night, Conspicuous seen athwart the northern sky, That cheers the tempest-tost ’plex’d seamen’s sight, And polar fixed star he doth descry, To guide his vent’rous bark, borne on the billows high. CXCIII. These seven revolving planets, ever bright, That round our system’s sun all glorious roll, And shine all radiant with a borrowed light, Form but a section of the mighty whole. The thought it kindled up the poet’s soul, To stretch her pinion o’er the vast profound, System on system ’bove the starry pole, That man’s poor intellect it doth astound, Whose flight, like Icarus, soon hastens to the ground. CXCIV.