Watcher of the skies

"As a twenty-year-old medical student, John Keats spent a drink-fuelled night enthusing over a newly purchased verse translation of Homer's Iliad. Early the next morning, he took less than four hours to set down his own famous poem, in which he compared his feelings with those of 'some watcher of the skies/When a new planet swims into his ken'. Keats was referring to William Herschel, the astronomer who had effectively enlarged the solar system at the end of the eighteenth century by detecting a sixth planet, now known as Uranus, but initially named after George III. "

Read the review here, while you watch the video here:



That's Peter Gabriel behind the mask.

Thanks, Arts and Letters Daily.
 

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