The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

These lines are from Joseph Addison’s devotional poem “The Spacious Firmament on High,” better known by its opening, “The spacious firmament on high, / With all the blue ethereal sky.” Addison (1672–1719), a leading essayist of the early eighteenth century and co-founder of The Spectator, wrote a number of religious poems that circulated widely in print and were later adopted into English hymnody. The passage occurs near the poem’s close, where contemplation of the heavens and the created order turns into a meditation on human mortality and the soul’s destiny. In that setting, Addison contrasts the eventual decay of the cosmos with the promised immortality of the faithful.

The speaker imagines even the grandest features of the universe—stars, sun, and “Nature” itself—aging and collapsing, a deliberately vast scale meant to dwarf ordinary human fears. Against this cosmic entropy stands “thou,” typically read as the human soul (or the righteous person) addressed in a devotional mode. The “war of elements” and “wreck of matter” evoke apocalyptic dissolution: the material world is contingent and perishable, while spiritual life is figured as “immortal youth,” untouched by physical catastrophe. The rhetoric reassures by reversing expectations: what seems most permanent (the heavens) is temporary, while what seems most fragile (the individual) can be enduring through divine promise.