[80] The following are illustrative phrases: “Rich spangles,” Waller, “Of the Queen;” “Spangled nights,” Cowley, “Davideis,” i, 94; “Spangled sphere,” Cowley, “The Extasy;” “Burning spangles of sidereal gold,” Broome, “Paraphrase of Eccl.;” “Freezing spangles,” Tickell, “On the Prospect of Peace;” “The sky spangled with a thousand eyes,” Gay, “Fables,” i, 11; “Spangled pole,” Pitt, “On the Death of Mr. Stanhope;” “Heaven’s gilded troops,” Cowley, “Davideis,” i, 183; “Stars that gild the gloomy night,” Parnell, “Hymn to Contentment;” “Twinkling stars who gild the skies,” Watts, “Sun, Moon,” etc.; “Shooting star that gilds the night,” Somerville, “Hobbinol,” iii, 261; “Stars that gild the northern skies,” Pitt, “Congress of Cambray;” “Meteor that gilds the night,” Somerville, “Field Sports,” i, 139; “Globes of light in fields of azure shine,” Watts, “God’s Dominion;” “Orbs of gold in fields of azure lie,” Parnell, “Queen Anne’s Peace,” l. 38; “Yon blue tract enriched with orbs of light,” Parnell, “David,” l. 358. [81] Some of Young’s phrases are “rolling spheres,” “tuneful spheres,” “revolving spheres,” “unnumbered lustres,” “sparks of night,” “lucid orbs,” “radiant choir,” “etherial fires,” “mathematic glories,” “aerial racers,” “midnight counselors,” “nocturnal suns,” “etherial armies,” “radiant lamps,” “splendours,” “ambient orbs,” “nocturnal sparks,” “night’s radiant scale,” etc. [82] Burnet, “Theory of the Earth,” chapter on “Stars.” Cf. Prior, “Solomon,” i, 502–11. [83] Wordsworth, “Peter Bell.” [84] Ruskin (“Modern Painters,” III, 248) comments on Dante’s “intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud or dimness of rain.” McLaughlin says of clouds, moonlight, etc.: “Let any reader of mediaeval poetry recall how imperceptible a part they play in it, even as plain facts of description. A line in one of the Latin songs expresses the feeling: their thought of clouds is how delightful not to see them. Moonlight, too, is seldom dwelt on as poetical; the most romantic touch that comes to my mind with it, is in Chrestien de Troyes where it shines over the reconciliation of estranged lovers. Just as we find little notice of sunrise, sunset, clouds, and moon, we find little feeling for the stars. They are mentioned occasionally in a facile way, though scarcely ever with manifest sentiment.”--“Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature,” p. 21. Mr. Symonds says of the same period: “The earth is felt chiefly through the delightfulness of healthy sensations. The stars and clouds, and tempests of the heavens, the ever-recurring miracle of sunrise, the solemn pageant of sunsetting are almost as though they were not in this literature.”--J. A. Symonds, “Essays Speculative and Suggestive,” p. 300.