XXI. The Zodiac

Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol, tr. by Israel Zangwill, [1923], at sacred-texts.com

p. 98

XXI.

Who shall attain to Thy exaltation?
For Thou hast encompassed the sphere of Saturn with an eighth sphere of encompassment,
And it is laden with the twelve constellations
On the line of the belt of its ephod,
And all the higher stars of cloudland
Fixed in its rigidity.
And every star of them compasseth its circuit in six and thirty thousand years,
From the greatness of its altitude;
And the body of each is a hundred and seven times that of the earth,
And this is the limit of its greatness.
And from the might of these stars
Is drawn the strength of all creatures below,
Each after its kind,
According to the will of the Creator who hath appointed them,
And set every one of them in its fit station,
And given it its name,
"Each man to his service and his station."