"The Terrestrial Year passing through the Signs of the Zodiac."

Ar Lichfield, in the year 1800, Mr Lloyd, the astronomer, lectured publicly with a large illuminated Orrery. It exhibited the Solar System. There we saw the Earth whirl. ing rapidly round on her axis, with her attendant moons, and passing through the signs of the Zodiac. Observe, said he, that the Earth enters Aries in January, with near two thirds of her surface dark that, as she passes through Taurus in February, more of her sphere becomes enlightened. Entering Gemini in March, you find, on her journey through that sign, exactly half her globe luminous; equal day and night. You now perceive her in Cancer, April, with a larger portion of her surface light;-and now, in Leo, May, yet more of it is in brightness. Now that she passes through Virgo, June, you see that not so much as one third of her orb is opaque, the rest in splendour.

hence

Mr Lloyd traced her decreasing portion of light through the remaining signs, till she became more than two thirds dark in the December sign, Pisces.

When the Lecture was ended, I observed to Mr Lloyd, that I had always understood Aries and Taurus, to be vernal signs; that Milton says,

"the bees

"In Spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides," &c.

And Thomson,

"At length from Aries rolls the bounteous Sun,
"And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
"The expansive atmosphere is crampt with cold,
"But full of life, and vivifying soul,

"Lifts the light clouds sublime."

"Yet, Madam," replied the astronomer, "the poets are right, " and your lecturer not mistaken. The Sun is in Aries, when "the Earth is in Gemini; he is in Taurus when she is in "Cancer; the Sun is always in the third sign back from "that through which the Earth passes. I have not traced "the Sun's, but the Earth's annual progress through the signs of the Zodiac."

The Romans, I knew, measured their year by the Sun's signs, and made March the first month, when he is in Aries; and that being the first sign, they place it in the first month of their year; though, according to Mr Lloyd's system, the Earth is then in the third sign, Gemini. Guthrie's Grammar takes the Roman year, and the solar signs, allotting the first sign, Aries, to March; but our year does not begin with March, but with January.

Since Mr Lloyd left Lichfield, the Rev. Mr White of that

place, sent me an astronomical Tract, entitled Hopton's Concordancy of Years. It is printed in the black letter, An. Dom. 1611, and is dedicated to the famous Sir Edward Coke.

That Tract maintains the same theory with Mr Lloyd, respecting the Earth's progress in the Solar System. It appoints the same signs to the same months, exactly as they were allotted in Lloyd's Orrery, viz. Aries to January, and so on, while the opposite page in the same Tract tells us that the Sun enters Aquarius on the 10th of January.

A philosophical gentleman observed to me, that the Earth must be in the sign opposite the Sun, that when he is in Capricorn she must be in Cancer. If that gentleman was not grossly mistaken, the above-mentioned Tract shews that Astronomical Professors held a different theory in the 17th century. If they were wrong, Mr Lloyd must have lectured upon an exploded system respecting the course of the Sun's and the Earth's signs, as relative to each other. This would be a strange disgrace to a Professor of Astronomy ;but Poetry has a prescriptive right to follow new, or old systems as they shall best suit her purpose. She does not resign, even on the mandate of Sir Isaac Newton, her privilege of representing the Sun as diurnally rising and setting; --and we still persist in commonly speaking of the Sun as on his daily progress from the East to the West, instead of adverting to the Earth's revolutions, which constitute day and night on that part of her surface which alternately obtains and loses the lustre of the stationary Sun, in the course of twenty-four hours.

While I attended to Mr Lloyd's Lecture, the idea struck me that poetical use might be made of the terrestrial year on its progress through the signs, as in that Orrery represented ;— thus, by personifying the year as a nymph, and the months also, as nymphs and swains;some busied with their emblematic signs;-some paying their compliments to the year as she passes through those signs in her progressive course ;— and others insulting her declining progress; while, amid the

fanciful imagery, some terrestrial landscape-scenery might be presented, as in a bird's-eye prospect from the Zodiac.

Being asked why I did not rather chuse to take the Roman year, and trace the Sun through his signs, I replied, that it would, in comparison, be a common-place theme. Many of our poets have described, or adverted to the solar signs, and left me nothing new to say upon the subject. Dr Darwin's volume on agriculture contains some fine lines, (if they are not too fine for cabbage-culture,) in which he beautifully alludes to the Sun's passage through some of the signs.

I have considered the year not by the Roman Calendar, but by ours, as forming new poetic ground, by admitting a construction of the emblematic signs, as relative to our planet, the Earth. Hence the following Poem.

THE

TERRESTRIAL YEAR,

ON HER PROGRESS THRO' THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

JANUARY IN ARIES.

CLOSE to her ram cold January clings,
And on his beard her pearly ice-drop flings;
Awakes the shivering Year, yet young, to rise,
Tho' wild winds whistle thro' the iron skies.

FEBRUARY IN TAURUS.

Like fair Europa, February stands,

And wreathes her bull's stout neck with floral bands, Spurning the frozen circle, loud he roars,

And scorns her snowy and her golden flowers. Pleas'd, yet with pensive smile, the dubious Year

Welcomes that primal tribute to her sphere.