The heavens were richly but very irregularly inwrought with stars. The
brighter stars clustered into well known groups upon a background
formed of an enlacement of streams and convoluted windings and
intertwined spirals of fainter stars, which became richer and more
intricate in the irregularly rifted zone of the Milky Way. We, who
formed part of the emblazonry, could only see the design distorted and
confused; here crowded, there scattered, at another place superposed.
The groupings due to our position were mixed up with those which were
real. Could we suppose that each luminous point had no relation to the
others near it than the accidental neighborship of grains of sand upon
the shore, or of particles of the wind-blown dust of the desert?
Surely every star from Sirius and Vega down to each grain of the light
dust of the Milky Way had its present place in the heavenly pattern
from the slow evolving of its past. We saw a system of systems, for
the broad features of clusters and streams and spiral windings marking
the general design were reproduced in every part. The whole was in
motion, each point shifting its position by miles every second, though
from the august magnitude of their distances from us and from each
other, it was only by the accumulated movements of years or of
generations that some small changes of relative position revealed
themselves.