I’d never witnessed a lunar eclipse before, so on February 20th I set aside my stacks of papers and gazed at the night sky.

Through a skylight on the second floor of my house, I watched the moon grow dull and orange, as the lights of Saturn and the star Regulus became more vibrant. Astronomers call Wednesday’s eclipse “the moon, the lord of the rings, and the heart of the lion.” Very poetic and beautiful.

Here’s Thomas Hardy’s poetic approach to a lunar eclipse. Since this is a Hardy poem, he of course has to talk about the awfulness of humanity: how petty it is, and how small.

At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?