NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Prose and Poetry and Navigation
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2016 Apr 27, 10:24 -0400
On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 1:58 AM, Doug MacPherson <NoReply_MacPherson@fer3.com> wrote:
> Over the years I have enjoyed NavList, many contributors have written
> elequently of their passion for the stars. Does anyone else have a favorite
> prose passage or poem that describes thier interest in Celestial Navigation?
About a month ago I posted a few lines from William Falconer's epic poem Shipwreck (more than 2500 lines), describing the mid-18th century morning ritual of observing the rising sun and determining magnetic variation.
I was surprised to discover a slightly different version of these same lines published around 1800, three decades after Falconer was lost at sea.The language is a little clearer about what the navigator is doing, but I think a bit of the poetical is lost. i do not know which version was the original.
Here are the lines about navigation:
Now morn her lamp pale glimmering sight
Scatter'd before her van reluctant night
She comes not in refulgent pomp array'd
But sternly frowning wrapt in sullen shade
...
The dim horizon lowering vapours shroud
And blot the sun yet struggling in the cloud
Thro the wide atmosphere condens'd with haze
His glaring orb emits a sanguine blaze
The pilots now their rules of art apply
The mystic needle's devious aim to try
The compass plac'd to catch the rising ray
The quadrant's shadows studious they survey
Along the arch the gradual index slides
While Phœbus down the vertic circle glides
Now seen on ocean's utmost verge to swim
He sweeps it vibrant with his nether limb
Their sage experience thus explores the height
And polar distance of the source of light
Then thro the chiliads triple maze they trace
The analogy that proves the magnet's place
The wayward steel to truth thus reconcil'd
No more the attentive pilot's eye beguil'd.
As the title implies, it does not end well:
Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke
The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke
Forth started from their planks the bursting rings
The extended cordage all asunder springs
The pilot's fair machinery strews the deck
And cards and needles swim in floating wreck...
Don Seltzer
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2016 Apr 27, 10:24 -0400
On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 1:58 AM, Doug MacPherson <NoReply_MacPherson@fer3.com> wrote:
> Over the years I have enjoyed NavList, many contributors have written
> elequently of their passion for the stars. Does anyone else have a favorite
> prose passage or poem that describes thier interest in Celestial Navigation?
About a month ago I posted a few lines from William Falconer's epic poem Shipwreck (more than 2500 lines), describing the mid-18th century morning ritual of observing the rising sun and determining magnetic variation.
I was surprised to discover a slightly different version of these same lines published around 1800, three decades after Falconer was lost at sea.The language is a little clearer about what the navigator is doing, but I think a bit of the poetical is lost. i do not know which version was the original.
Here are the lines about navigation:
Now morn her lamp pale glimmering sight
Scatter'd before her van reluctant night
She comes not in refulgent pomp array'd
But sternly frowning wrapt in sullen shade
...
The dim horizon lowering vapours shroud
And blot the sun yet struggling in the cloud
Thro the wide atmosphere condens'd with haze
His glaring orb emits a sanguine blaze
The pilots now their rules of art apply
The mystic needle's devious aim to try
The compass plac'd to catch the rising ray
The quadrant's shadows studious they survey
Along the arch the gradual index slides
While Phœbus down the vertic circle glides
Now seen on ocean's utmost verge to swim
He sweeps it vibrant with his nether limb
Their sage experience thus explores the height
And polar distance of the source of light
Then thro the chiliads triple maze they trace
The analogy that proves the magnet's place
The wayward steel to truth thus reconcil'd
No more the attentive pilot's eye beguil'd.
As the title implies, it does not end well:
Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke
The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke
Forth started from their planks the bursting rings
The extended cordage all asunder springs
The pilot's fair machinery strews the deck
And cards and needles swim in floating wreck...
Don Seltzer
