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 sky
Arched low o’er the desert, reaching far
Its weary leagues wind-parched and dry:
So bare and lone and sad it lay,
The gray old land that seemed to yearn
With a human longing for some caress
From its granite barriers, grim and stern.
Shouldering up to the very stars
The strong peaks lifted their solemn might;
And through their rock-gapped pinnacles burned
The wondrous glory that charmed the night.
Like a giant’s scimeter wrought in gold
The 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 swung
A silver sphere in the hither sky;—
(Is it so, O Life, that thy light is lost
In the disk of Death if we could but know?)
And the old land blushed with sudden youth
In the tender fire of the morning-glow.