At the end of March, 1611, Galileo went to Rome to induce
                    the ecclesiastical authorities to look through his telescope.
                    On April 14, 1611, he was invited to an important banquet...
                                -Henry King, The History of the Telescope

The banquet held in Galileo's honor
Began at sunset when we all took turns
Recovering each word of an inscription
Carved above a door a mile away.
Amazed, we feasted. Rising after dinner,
We stood in line again to see the burns
That marred the moon's thin crescent, and the sky
Grew darker still, dense clusters of small stars
Becoming visible, as if the sun
Had touched them with its light before it fled.
I stepped aside, glanced down and saw small fires
Burning below, through trees. I ate some bread.
A clear night without clouds-the ideal weather.
We did not gladly yield our places, either.

"This we shall call a telescope," declared
Prince Frederick, our host. I was impressed
Till I discovered that another man-
The poet Demisiani-had coined the word.
How typical. (I'd learned this from Lagalla
In his justly famous Lunar Phenomena,
Not from the gossip of some other guest.)
On the night that he unveiled his invention-
Once we'd had our fill of Jupiter,
All four of its satellites, and each star
The Prince named for himself-Galileo
Dismantled his creation. The moon's advance
Across the sky at last had brought it low-
I waited for my turn to hold the lens.

           -from Ned Balbo,Galileo's Banquet (Washington Writers' Publishing House: 1998).