Nox Oculis

Astronomical poetry

Table of contents

Introduction

This compilation of astronomical poems, or poems inspired by the sky, the night or the darkness, is intended to be a work in progress. It springs from my readings on astronomy and poetry alike and has been spurred by my researches on the Internet. The first poems that I chose to offer on this site were in english because they reflected my fascination for certain American poets like Bryant, Frost and Whitman. Since the HTML coding of these texts is not a trivial task, I began my compilation with english-speaking poets. Jean-Pierre Luminet has done such a great job of compiling the french poetry that I'w waiting a little bit to move into that area. Note that the literature on the topic of celestial or astronomical poetry is more important in the anglo-saxon countries than in the french dispora.

But I wish to submit right now poems by such luminary French poets as Lamartine and Hugo, Baudelaire, to quote only a few.

I have decided to give the reader some information about the author or the poem(s). I hope that this knowlege will enable the reader to better assess the astronomical context of the poem or it's value in the frameworks of poetry. I also choose to submit the poem in it's totality rather than an extract, to better appreciate it in the context of the quotation.

I have selected poems according to astronomy topics but also to equally wider themes, themes linked to the sky, to the night and to the darkness. My choices are evidently my own and are, in particular cases, probably quite arbitrary, an inevitable fact in such a venture. But I hope that it will be a enticement to discover new meanings to the human experience of the night.

Authors list

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W-Z 

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W-Z 

Web resources

Bibliography
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© 2003 Mario Tessier - Tous droits réservés.
Adresse URL : http://pages.infinit.net/noxoculi/poetry.html