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Monday 19 September 2016

"Driv'n by the spheres"

"…...Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurled."    
from The World,  Henry Vaughan


St. Mark's Clocktower, Piazza San Marco, Venice 


We are now halfway through the celestial Zodiac, when the sequence turns from the northern hemisphere to the southern, Time marking the move from summer to winter as the autumn equinox approaches.
On a more prosaic note than the seventeenth century poet Henry Vaughan,  the late Victorian Rev. E.C. Brewer (in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) provides this helpful mnemonic for the monthly astrological signs:

"Our vernal signs the RAM begins,
Then comes the BULL, in May the TWINS;-
The CRAB in June, next LEO shines,
And VIRGO ends the northern signs.

The BALANCE brings autumnal fruits,
The  SCORPION stings, the ARCHER shoots,
December's GOAT brings wintry blast,
AQUARIUS rain, the FISH come last."




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