The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4Poe, Edgar Allan
General
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American; Short stories
idea—is, in sober fact, the practical conception which alone we
have any right to entertain in respect to those Titanic circles
with which we have to deal, at least in fancy, when we suppose
our system, with its fellows, revolving about a point in the
centre of the galaxy. Let the most vigorous of human imaginations
but attempt to take a single step toward the comprehension of a
circuit so unutterable! It would scarcely be paradoxical to say
that a flash of lightning itself, travelling forever upon the
circumference of this inconceivable circle, would still forever
be travelling in a straight line. That the path of our sun along
such a circumference—that the direction of our system in such an
orbit—would, to any human perception, deviate in the slightest
degree from a straight line even in a million of years, is a
proposition not to be entertained; and yet these ancient
astronomers were absolutely cajoled, it appears, into believing
that a decisive curvature had become apparent during the brief
period of their astronomical history—during the mere point—during
the utter nothingness of two or three thousand years! How
incomprehensible, that considerations such as this did not at
once indicate to them the true state of affairs—that of the
binary revolution of our sun and Alpha Lyrae around a common
centre of gravity!
April 7.—Continued last night our astronomical amusements. Had a
fine view of the five Neptunian asteroids, and watched with much
interest the putting up of a huge impost on a couple of lintels
in the new temple at Daphnis in the moon. It was amusing to think
that creatures so diminutive as the lunarians, and bearing so
little resemblance to humanity, yet evinced a mechanical
ingenuity so much superior to our own. One finds it difficult,
too, to conceive the vast masses which these people handle so
easily, to be as light as our own reason tells us they actually
are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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