Her columns grew longer, and if she squinted at them, the confetti of inklings began to resemble a skyful of stars. She had time to let her mind wander. The Magi’s search for Bethlehem; the music of Milton’s crystal spheres . . . they could all be reduced to these numbers. There was actually no need to squint and pretend that the digits were the stars. They were, by themselves, wildly alive, fact and symbol of the vast, cool distances in which one located the light of different worlds.
—THOMAS MALLON, Two Moons
Then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together from the earth to Uranus, and the mysterious outskirts of the solar system; from the solar system to a star in the Swan, the nearest fixed star in the northern sky; from the star in the Swan to remoter stars; thence to the remotest visible; till the ghastly chasm which they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realized. . . .
—THOMAS HARDY, Two on a Tower