Othello – Act V  Scene II . By William Shakesphere (1564 – 1616)

This is the excellent foppery of the world, 

that when we are sick in fortune – 

often the surfeit of our behaviour – 

we make guilty of our disasters 

the sun, the moon and the stars, 

as if we are villains by necessity, 

fools by heavenly compulsion, 

knaves, thieves, and treachers, 

by spherical predominance, 

drunkards, liars and adulterers, 

by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, 

and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.

The Solemn Hymn  Written before his death by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, 1807-1882

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress;

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Paradise Lost III By John Milton, English poet (1608 – 1674)

Till, at his second bidding, Darkness fled,

Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.

Swift to their several quarters hasted then

The cumbrous elements – Earth, Flood, Air, Fire;

And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven

Flew upward, spirited with various forms,

That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars

Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move:

Each had his place appointed, each his course;

The rest in circuit walls this Universe.

Paradise Lost VII

A broad and ample road,

Whose dust is gold,

And pavement stars,

as stars to thee appear

Seen in the galaxy,

that milky way

Which nightly as a circling zone

Thou seest

Powder’d with stars.