The Geography of the Heavens: And Class-book of Astronomy: Accompanied by a Celestial Atlas

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Sheldon, 1873 - Astronomy - 348 pages

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Page 152 - And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Page 114 - Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines* of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim: Such harmony is in immortal souls; . But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Page 155 - And oft, before tempestuous winds arise, The seeming stars fall headlong from the skies, And, shooting through the darkness, gild the night With sweeping glories, and long trails of light...
Page 157 - ... and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind...
Page 156 - Towards the morning of the 13th of November, 1799, we witnessed a most extraordinary scene of shooting meteors. Thousands of bodies and falling stars succeeded each other during four hours. Their direction was very regular from north to south. From the beginning of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent to three diameters of the moon which was not filled every instant with bodies or falling stars. All the meteors left luminous traces or phosphorescent bands behind them,...
Page 142 - O what a confluence of ethereal fires, From urns unnumber'd, down the steep of heaven, Streams to a point, and centres in my sight! Nor tarries there; I feel it at my heart. My heart, at once, it humbles, and exalts ; Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies.
Page 278 - The inclination of the Earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic causes the equinoctial to depart 23° 28
Page 49 - And, scatter'd o'er the earth, the shining fragments lay. The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair, Shot from the chariot, like a falling star, That in a summer's evening from the top Of heaven drops down, or seems at least to drop ; Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurl'd, Far from his country, in the western world.
Page 55 - Fair Leda's twins (in time to stars decreed) One fought on foot, one curb'd the fiery steed...
Page 156 - about three o'clock in the morning to see the shooting stars, as they are called. The phenomenon was grand and awful. The whole heavens appeared as if illuminated with sky-rockets, which disappeared only by the light of the sun toward daybreak.

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