"Without beginning, without end";--I submit them to suggest a way to
overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the
second "without." I should not like "impend."
Yes, I vote for Orion's _sword_ of suns. "Cimetar" sounds better, but
it is more specific--less generic. It is modern--or, rather, less
ancient than "sword," and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land.
But "sword"--there were swords before Homer. And I don't think the man
who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and
yet--"cimetar of suns" is "mighty catchin'."
No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a
state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar
of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus:
"Not as two erring spheres together grind,
With monstrous ruin, in the vast of space,
Destruction born of that malign embrace--
Their hapless peoples all to death consigned--" etc.
I've been a star-gazer all my life--from my habit of being "out late,"
I guess; and the things have always seemed to me _alive_.
The change in the verses _ad meum_, from "_thy_ clearer light" to
"_the_ clearer light" may have been made modestly or inadvertently--I
don't recollect. It is, of course, no improvement and you may do as
you please. I'm uniformly inadvertent, but intermittently modest.
* * * * *
A class of stuff that I can't (without "trouble in the office") write
my own way I will not write at all. So I'm writing very little of
anything but nonsense. * * *