April is National Poetry Month in the US, a wonderful time to celebrate the passion and delight of poets and poetry throughout history. Poetry evokes our deepest heartfelt feelings, through its “rhythmical creation of beauty in words” (Edgar Allen Poe). As Samuel Becket once said, “Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.” Poetry leads us to appreciate the world around us through an honest but more subtle and nuanced point of view than what we often find in prose.
An Astrologer’s Song was written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the British Nobel-prize winning journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. The poem I am sharing here was published in Rewards and Fairies (1910) with “A Doctor of Medicine,” and reflects the beliefs of the seventeenth-century physician Nicholas Culpeper.
Kipling also gave a lecture in November 1928 to the Royal Society of Medicine on “Healing by the Stars,” in which he spent much of his speech talking about Culpeper. His argument was that Culpeper, “as an astrologer, believed in the unity of the universe. Kipling declared that Culpeper would find much to confirm his belief in modern science and medicine. Kipling feared that recent scientific discoveries had made medicine more limited in approach.”
Here is An Astrologer’s Song:
To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?
All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one:
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.
Oh, man that deniest
All power save thine own,
Their power in the highest
Is mightily shown.
Not less in the lowest
That power is made clear.
(Oh, man, if thou knowest,
What treasure is here!)
Earth quakes in her throes
And we wonder for why!
But the blind planet knows
When her ruler is nigh;
And, attuned since Creation
To perfect accord,
She thrills in her station
And yearns to her Lord.
The waters have risen,
The springs are unbound--
The floods break their prison,
And ravin around.
No rampart withstands 'em,
Their fury will last,
Till the Sign that commands 'em
Sinks low or swings past.
Through abysses unproven
O'er gulfs beyond thought,
Our portion is woven,
Our burden is brought.
Yet They that prepare it,
Whose Nature we share,
Make us who must bear it
Well able to bear.
Though terrors o'ertake us
We'll not be afraid.
No Power can unmake us
Save that which has made:
Nor yet beyond reason
Or hope shall we fall--
All things have their season,
And Mercy crowns all!
Then, doubt not, ye fearful--
The Eternal is King--
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing:--
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?
Oh wow. I only knew of Rudyard Kipling from Jungle Book and Just So Stories. I had no idea he studied Culpeper, though I shouldn't be surprised given the rampant occultism of turn of the century intellectuals. Thanks for sharing!
And being from the mystical land of Mother India probably influenced his more “alternative”/esoteric interests too! Thank you! 💕🙏