...far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees...

Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?""Yes.""All like ours?""I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted.""Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?""A blighted one.

And strange-eyed constellations reignHis stars eternally.

The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.