The constellated soundsran sprinkling on earth’s floorAs the dark vault abovewith stars was spangled o’er.
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Sometime in the first billion years, life appeared on the earth’s surface. Slowly, the fossil record indicates, living organisms climbed the ladder from simple to more advanced forms.
robert jastrowTotakeanalmost religiousview, thisearthisnothing very special.There have probably been millions of earths just like ours each producing a particular intelligent species. That isnottosay thattheyall developed well, thattheyall achieved some sort of perfection. And if the planner made lots of them and some of them chose to destroy themselves,thenwe canonlysupposethattheplanner is a hard and practical man.
Sir Fred HoyleSo my great love for thee lies tranquil, deep,Forever; though above it passions fierce,Ambition, hatred, jealousy; like wavesThat seem from earth’s core to the sky to leap,But ocean’s depths can never really pierce;Hide its great calm, while all the surface raves.
francis william bourdillonHark! Hark! my soul, angelic songs are swellingO’er earth’s green fields and ocean’s wave-beat shore;How sweet the truth those blessed strains are tellingOf that new life when sin shall be no more.
frederick William faberThese, in the day when heaven was falling,The hour when earth’s foundations fled,Followed their mercenary callingAnd took their wages and are dead.Their shoulders held the sky suspended;They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;What God abandoned, these defended,And saved the sum of things for pay.
a. e. housmanBut although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth’s diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.
johannes keplerAll earth’s full rivers can not fillThe sea that drinking thirsteth still.
christina rossettiI hear beyond the range of sound,I see beyond the range of sight,New earths and skies and seas around,And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
Henry David ThoreauThe sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Matthew ArnoldYour rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth’s centre (Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells); And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.
william empsonSweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Although on earth ’tis planted, Where its honours blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe critical first billion years, during which life began, are blank pages in the earth’s history.
robert jastrowAnd let a Scholler, all earths volumes carrie, He will be but a walking dictionarie.
Hyenas are slow in their pace, and altogether inactive; I have often seen a few terriers keep them at bay, and bite them severely by the hind quarters; their jaws, however, are exceedingly strong, and a single bite, without holding on, more than a few seconds, is sufficient to kill a large dog. They stink horribly, make no earths of their own, but lie under rocks, or resort to the earths of wolves, as foxes do to those of badgers, and it is not uncommon to find wolves and hyenas in the same bed of earths.
What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?
christiaan huygensThese movies belonged to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that period of great, unsustainable, and hedonistic prosperity, driven by the burning of Earth’s reserves of perishable oil, which culminated in the False Tribulation, and the wars, and the plagues, and the painful dwindling of inflated populations to more reasonable numbers.
robert charles wilsonAgronomy:;; or a Treatise on the Constituent Parts and Physical Properties of the Soil, and the best Method of acquiring a Knowledge of the different earths, and ascertaining their Value.
"Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850."