Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/205



And Bayard Taylor speaks of

The poets, with their magic words, make the stars seem close to us, despite the fact that science tells us that the Pleiades, for instance, lie so far away in space that it takes 200 years for their light to reach the earth.

Since December, when Orion and Taurus are at their best, is the month of beautiful stars, let us look around the heavens and see how many of them we are able to recognize.

From the far northeast to the far northwest, passing just a little north of the zenith, the Milky Way stretches in one continuous line of splendor. Up and down the heavenly vault, hundreds of diamond-like little stars glitter like gleams from pinholes in heaven, while the large stars hang down through the cold, black nights almost within reaching distance. One may now count ten brilliant stars of the first magnitude, but the configuration of stars which forms the constellation of Orion and the peerless Dog Star, Sirius, are the stars which hold the eye. Watch the Dog Star rise in the east about 9 o'clock during the first part of December or about 8 o'clock later in the month. If all the other stars burn like wind-enflamed jewels, Sirius sputters and sparkles like a bonfire of Jupiter's lightning rods.

Across the Milky Way from Sirius, the yellow star Procyon, the head-star on the Little Dog, is also appearing, while in the west, two large stars are setting, the scene being almost duplicated.