Fierce as a Comet.”
The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:
“Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?
Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds
On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”
The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein. There is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even to-day, which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his “History of the Doctrine of Comets”:
“Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid range;
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”