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             Spring Night

The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights light sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth’s wonder with surprise?
Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,

I for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,
I for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. She is the author of many poetry collections and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her "Love Songs"  Read more  

This poem is in the public domain.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes, the sky itself seems to smile. A few days ago, visible over much of the world, an unusual superposition of our Moon with the planets Venus and Saturn created just such an iconic facial expression. Specifically, a crescent Moon appeared to make a happy face on the night sky when paired with seemingly nearby planets. Pictured is the scene as it appeared over Zacatecas, México, with distinctive Bufa Hill in the foreground. On the far right and farthest in the distance is the planet Saturn. Significantly closer and visible to Saturn's upper left is Venus, the brightest planet on the sky. Just above the central horizon is Earth's Moon in a waning crescent phase. To create this gigantic icon, the crescent moon phase must be smiling in the correct direction. Dial-A-Moon: Find the Moon phase on your birthday this year

Photo by Daniel Korona

"The problem with climate change isn’t just the temperature – it’s also how fast the climate is changing today.
Historically, Earth’s climate changes have generally happened over thousands to millions of years. Today, global temperatures are increasing by about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade". More at The Conversation ➜

Israeli chief of staff in a meeting in Northern Command, during Yom Kippur War. Today is Yom HaZikaron.

IDF Spokesperson's Unit photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Where are Saturn's ears? Galileo is credited, in 1610, as the first person to see Saturn's rings. Testing out Lipperhey's recently co-invented telescope, Galileo did not know what they were and so called them "ears". The mystery deepened in 1612, when Saturn's ears mysteriously disappeared. Today we know exactly what happened: from the perspective of the Earth, Saturn's rings had become too thin to see. The same drama plays out every 15 years because Saturn, like Earth, undergoes tilt-driven seasons. This means that as Saturn goes around the Sun, its equator and rings can tilt noticeably toward the Sun and inner Solar System, making them easily visible, but from other orbital locations will appear almost not at all. The featured picture from Brasilia, Brazil shows a modern version of this sequence: the top ring-dominated image was taken in 2020, while the bottom ring-obscure image taken earlier in 2025. Make Saturn's Rings Musical: Play them like a harp!

Photo by Natan Fontes

Red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) in Łazienki Park, Warsaw.

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds alongside the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster, it sails far southern skies within the nautical constellation Carina. Stars from NGC 3572 are toward top center in the telescopic frame that would measure about 100 light-years across at the cluster's estimated distance of 9,000 light-years. The visible interstellar gas and dust, shown in colors of the Hubble palette, is part of the star cluster's natal molecular cloud, itself cataloged as Gum 37. Dense streamers of material within the nebula, eroded by stellar winds and radiation, clearly trail away from the energetic young stars. They are likely sites of ongoing star formation with shapes reminiscent of the Tadpoles of IC 410 -- better known to northern skygazers. In the coming tens to hundreds of millions of years, gas and stars in the cluster will be dispersed though, by gravitational tides and by violent supernova explosions that end the short lives of the massive cluster stars.

Photo by Francis Bozon & Cecil Navick (AstroA. R. O.)