THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS
The occultation of Venus and the moon, in March, 1899, was wonderfully beautiful and impressive as seen in the desert.
A jeweled crown for an old man’s brow,That mystical, splendid, tropic skyArched low o’er the desert, reaching farIts weary leagues wind-parched and dry:So bare and lone and sad it lay,The gray old land that seemed to yearnWith a human longing for some caressFrom its granite barriers, grim and stern.Shouldering up to the very starsThe strong peaks lifted their solemn might;And through their rock-gapped pinnacles burnedThe wondrous glory that charmed the night.Like a giant’s scimeter wrought in goldThe late moon rose in the dawn-touched east,And close beside white Venus shone,As once she shone on shrine and priest.Like a soul’s white flame the planet passed—Alone the moon rode proud and high—O wait of God! the lost star swungA silver sphere in the hither sky;—(Is it so, O Life, that thy light is lostIn the disk of Death if we could but know?)And the old land blushed with sudden youthIn the tender fire of the morning-glow.