Taming the Shrew

Abstract

On the night in 1864 that Horace Tuttle was observing Tempel’s comet from aboard the swaying deck of the Catskill, a young English poet was watching the same comet from another shore. Gerard Manley Hopkins later became one of the nineteenth century’s best known English poets—his sonnet “The Windhover” is widely read in many schools. The moonless predawn sky was clear on both the English and U.S. coasts; although Jupiter and Saturn had already set, Mars was prominent in the southern sky. High in the east were Auriga and Taurus. Just west of the second magnitude star Beta Tauri shone the head of Tempel’s comet, its tail stretching toward nearby Iota Aurigae.