“The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space." by George Gordon Byron?
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George Gordon Byron 227
English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement 1788–1824

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“Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
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“And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

And Thou Art Dead as Young and Fair (1812).

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“And all o'er heaven is that clear blue
The stars so love to wander through.
They're rising from the silent deep,
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“Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die?”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 5: "Dead God", p. 60 (original emphasis)
Context: God is nowhere to be found, yet there is still so much light! Light that dazzles and maddens; crisp, ruthless light. Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die? Or the moon retain such fidelity to the Earth? Where is the new darkness? The greatest of all unknowings? Is death itself shy of us?

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
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“Should there really be suns in the whole infinite space, they can be at approximately the same distance from one another, or distributed over galaxies, hence would be in infinite quantities, and consequently the whole sky should be as bright as the sun. Clearly, each line which can conceivably be drawn from our eye will necessarily end on one of the stars and each point on the sky would send us starlight, that is, sunlight.”

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) German physician and astronomer

Sind wirklich im ganzen unendlichen Raum Sonnen vorhanden, sie mögen nun in ungefähr gleichen Abständen von einander, oder in Milchstrassen-Systeme vertheilt sein, so wird ihre Menge unendlich, und da müsste der ganze Himmel ebenso hell sein, wie die Sonne. Denn jede Linie, die ich mir von unserm Auge gezogen denken kann, wird nothwendig auf irgend einen Fixstern treffen, und also müßte uns jeder Punkt am Himmel Fixsternlicht, also Sonnenlicht zusenden.
Olbers' paradox, expressed in [Ueber die Durchsichtigkeit des Weltraums, Astronomisches Jahrbuch für das Jahr 1826, J. Bode. Berlin, Späthen 1823, 110-121]

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“What is one man's life compared to the eternity of time and space? No more than a snowflake that glitters in the sun for a moment before melting into the flow of time.”

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Source: Buddha, Vol. 2: The Four Encounters

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“Let us then willingly take the Eternal with us in our flight among the suns and stars.
Experience is our great teacher, and on this point it is wholly wanting.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

Beyond the Veil
Context: Life passes, but the conditions of life do not. Air, food, water, the moral sense, the mathematical problem and its solution. These things wait upon one generation much as they did upon its predecessor. What, too, is this wonderful residuum which refuses to disappear when the very features of time seem to succumb to the law of change, and we recognize our world no more? Whence comes this system in which man walks as in an artificial frame, every weight and lever of which must correspond with the outlines of an eternal pattern?
Our spiritual life appears to include three terms in one. They are ever with us, this Past which does not pass, this Future which never arrives. They are part and parcel of this conscious existence which we call Present. While Past and Future have each their seasons of predominance, both are contained in the moment which is gone while we say, "It is here."
So the Eternal is with us, whether we will or not, and the idea of God is inseparable from the persuasion of immortality; the Being which, perfect in itself, can neither grow nor decline, nor indeed undergo any change whatever. The great Static of the universe, the rationale of the steadfast faith of believing souls, the sense of beauty which justifies our high enjoyments, the sense of proportion which upholds all that we can think about ourselves and our world, the sense of permanence which makes the child in very truth parent to the man, able to solve the deepest riddle, the profoundest problem in all that is. Let us then willingly take the Eternal with us in our flight among the suns and stars.
Experience is our great teacher, and on this point it is wholly wanting. No one on the farther side of the great Divide has been able to inform those on the hither side of what lies beyond.

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