WINTER STARS 



I 



To know in a new and acute way the spell of 

 the nocturnal skies, it is not necessary to go 

 into the everlasting wonder and fascination 

 of darkness with an astronomer, or with one 

 whose knowledge of the stars Qan be expressed 

 with scholarly exactitude. For the student it 

 is needful to know, for example, that the 

 Hyades are Alpha, Delta, Eeta, etc., of Tauri, 

 and lie 10 south-east of the Pleiades. But as 

 one sits before the fireglow, with one's book 

 in hand to suggest or one's memory to remind, 

 it is in another way as delightful and as fascin- 

 ating to repeat again to oneself how Tennyson 

 in Ulysses speaks of this stellar cluster as 



"Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim 

 sea . . ." 



or how Christopher Marlowe wrote of them 

 290 



