Don't cut out that stanza, even if "clime" doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with duration. The stanza is good enough to stand a blemish.
"Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim"—I was wrong in substituting "that" for "who," not observing that it would make it ambiguous. I merely yielded to a favorite impulse: to say "that" instead of "who," and did not count the cost.
Don't cut out any stanza—if you can't perfect them let them go imperfect.
"Without or genesis or end."
"Devoid of birth, devoid of end."
These are not so good as
"Without beginning, without end";—I submit them to suggest a way to overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the second "without." I should not like "impend."
Yes, I vote for Orion's sword of suns. "Cimetar" sounds better, but it is more specific—less generic. It is modern—or, rather, less ancient than "sword," and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land. But "sword"—there were swords before Homer. And I don't think the man who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and yet—"cimetar of suns" is "mighty catchin'."
No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus:
"Not as two erring spheres together grind,
With monstrous ruin, in the vast of space,
Destruction born of that malign embrace—
Their hapless peoples all to death consigned—" etc.
I've been a star-gazer all my life—from my habit of being "out late," I guess; and the things have always seemed to me alive.