Evening Star

“ SONG TO THE EVENING STAR Star that bringest home the bee, And sett'st the weary laborer free! If any star shed peace, 'tis thou That send'st it from above, Appearing when Heaven's breath and brow Are sweet as hers we love. ”

“ Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light. ”

“ Darker grows the streak, as a stain of blood, while the clouds about it now assume a purple tinge with gloomier shadings; suddenly in the centre of the lurid field starts out as if that moment born to Earth, with clear, silver light, the Evening Star. The colour slowly fades till all is dead and ashy, and the silver star drops down below the purpled hills, leaving for a moment a soft, trembling twilight ”

“ But with the night the world becomes a world that he can dwell in. The evening star, sending its ray through opalescent dusk, is a sun he can dwell with. The sky grows soft. The hills are shrouded like his body; they are compounded like his soul of silences; they behold a sky that does not sear and an earth he can walk. The moon strides like a master, subduing the caravans of stars. ”

“ Had forced the clouds; it peered through boughs close-webbed.
A bright and steadfast star that shot its friendly rays.
"O Evening Star," the woman softly sobbed,
"Be sponsor, shed celestial light through trackless haze." ”

“ It exists at certain seasons in the remote twilight, above dark and tapestried moors, there where the evening star hangs wet and gold, or, at the moment when the young Cinderella moon puts her silver slipper upon the stairway of the west, departing at the given signal, before all the glory of the stars is come. ”

“ It is the Morning and the Evening Star. ”

“ The evening star lies close to the horizon, and in the sky the cold crescent moon hangs like an empty sickle. In the grass under the bank, with night dews thickly gathered upon him, lies a poor and weary reaper. ”

“ It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset,—the evening star following with silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air, with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him,—there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. ”

“ O soft star of the West,
Gleaming far,
Still guide the weary home,
Gentle star!
Shine from thy rosy heaven;
Pour joy on earth and sea!
Shine on! though no sweet eyes
Look forth to watch for me. ”

“ They come sometimes with the gay company of stars that dance their way across the cold winter skies, and sometimes with those that shine during the soft summer nights. Often in the spring and autumn we see some one of them before the sun is fairly down, and, before the light of an ordinary star can yet be seen, hanging in lone brilliancy as the evening star; and often an early riser has the reward of seeing one as a morning star glowing almost in the rays of the rising sun. ”

“ The evening star, like a saint praying in solitude, sees the sun disappear beneath her under the deep and diaphanous waters. The funereal region that we scan in the pallid light of a dreary, waning day, is covered with a rude and yellow growth like the pelt of a tiger. ”

“ The soul, yearning for yonder heights, shrinks from the journey through night and terrors. Then do you appear, O loveliest among the stars! You shed your light afar. Your beloved beams cleave the nocturnal twilight, and benignly you show us the way out of the valley.... Oh, you, my sweetly-beaming evening star, whom I have ever greeted so gladly,—do you greet, when she rises past you, on her way from the vale of earth to become a blessed angel beyond the stars, do you greet her from the heart that has never failed in its truth to her! ”

“ I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.
There was no other creature
That saw what I could see—
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me. ”

“ That which we call alternately the morning and the evening star, as in the one part of the orbit she rides foremost in the procession of night, in the other ushers in and anticipates the dawn, is a planetary world, which, with the five others that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in themselves dark bodies, and shine only by reflection ”

“ Therefore, we need not be surprised to learn that the brilliancy of the evening star is borrowed from the sun, and that if, while we are looking at the planet in the evening, the sun were to be suddenly extinguished, the planet would also vanish from view, though the stars would shine as before. ”

“ Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair? ”

“ It is a cloudless midsummer evening, and as the west fades the stars beam down upon the city, the evening-star hanging like a jonquil blossom. They are dimmed by the unwonted radiance which spreads around and above Carlton House. ”

“ The evening star is a beautiful, luminous point, but it has153 no shape which can be discerned with the unaided eye. When, however, the telescope is turned towards Venus we have the delightful spectacle of a tiny moon, which goes through its phases just as does our own satellite. When first seen as an evening star Venus will often be like the moon at the quarter, and then it will pass to the crescent shape. ”

“ And now let us go out on the terrace, where 'droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,' while the evening star 'washes the dusk with silver.' At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets. ”

“ The most learned of the Hermetists said, 'I cannot tell the meaning of the hounds or where the Meeting of the Suns is, but I think the fawn is the Morning and Evening Star.' I have little doubt that when the man saw the white fawn he was coming out of the darkness and passion of the world into some day of partial regeneration, and that it was the Morning Star and would be the Evening Star at its second coming. ”

“ VENUS AND JUPITER THE BRIGHT PLANET OF VENUS, THE GODDESS OF LOVE
Diameter—7,700 miles
ALMOST every one knows Venus, the beautiful Evening Star, which is also, by the way, an equally beautiful Morning Star. In ancient times the Greeks believed these to be two different stars, calling the Morning Star "Phosphorus," the torchbearer who lights the way for the Dawn, and the Evening Star "Hesperus," leader of the stars of night. These names were translated into Latin as Lucifer and Vesper. The Morning Star was the son of Astræus and Aurora and the Evening Star a brother of the Titan Atlas. ”

“ And there, with their gables lifting into the sunlight above deep hedgerows beautiful with Spring, he saw the cottages of earthly men. Past them he walked while the beauty of evening grew, with songs of birds, and scents wandering from flowers, and odours that deepened and deepened, and evening decked herself to receive the Evening Star. ”

“ At the end of the half-hour all the stars gather to listen to the entertainment provided by each constellation. The “star artists” exhibit their works of art; the star musicians play and sing; the star authors read their effusions; the star orators declaim or recite; and the star museum-directors give their exhibition. A vote of thanks, or some more substantial reward, may be given to the constellation furnishing the best entertainment.
Close the evening with refreshments consisting of cheese sandwiches cut star-shaped and filled, presumably, with green cheese from the moon ”

“ Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?" ”

“ She flushed, but answered archly:
“Stars belong to the night; they are of no account in this glorious sunshine;” and she lifted her face up to the sun, as if in gratitude that its friendly beams were shining on her once more.
“It is a glorious morning,” said the old man, taking a long breath of the pure, keen air.
“Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” Star murmured, in a low tone, but with a thrill in her voice which told how she felt the words.
Again a sneering smile distorted the lips of her companion. ”

“ The silence and damp of the earth revived her, and the sensation of the cold stone, against which she was leaning, was agreeable. Little stars speckled a mauve and misty sky, and out of the mysterious spring twilight there came a strange and ultimate yearning, a craving which nothing she had ever known could assuage. But those stars—could they tell her nothing? One, large almost as the moon itself, flamed up in the sky, and a voice within her whispered that that was her star, that it held the secret of her destiny. ”

“ Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere man marveled at it, but of all those who saw it none could have marveled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. ”

“ As the first primrose star blooms in the east, I seem to hear the roar of starting engines, and when, in cold and sublime beauty, a silver moon rides high in the vast immensity of the night, I yearn with an almost unbearable pain to be once more sitting far above a magic moonlit world, to be moving ever onwards through the dim sky, where here and there the white waiting arms of the searchlights swoop and linger amidst the stars ”

“ Viewed through the window of the earth's cold and icy atmosphere, the stars seen during the winter part of the journey seem to scintillate with particular brilliancy. Since we are then passing by the most colorful stars and the most spectacular star groups the gorgeousness of these scenes is unequaled. During the summer the stars are more demure and tranquil in their light but their soft fires gleam with the gold of romance which the ancient people cast about them in journeys of the past. ”

“ It was night; but no bright moon compensated for the absence of the greater orb, and the air was dark, though the sky itself shone with all its innumerable sparks of golden light. It was one of those nights in which the depth of the heavens becomes apparent, in which each separate star is seen hanging distinct and apart from all the rest, a lamp of everlasting fire in the blue profound of space. ”

“ And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw.
But you must not imagine because I have spoken of people praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing towards mountainous country that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendor of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. ”

“ And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star. It rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. “It is larger,” they cried. “It is brighter!” And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. ”

“ IN the fresh morning dawn, in the rosy air gleams a great Star, the brightest Star of the morning. His rays tremble on the white wall, as if he wished to write down on it what he can tell, what he has seen there and elsewhere during thousands of years in our rolling world. Let us hear one of his stories.
“A short time ago”—the Star’s “short time ago” is called among men “centuries ago”—“my rays followed a young artist. It was in the city of the Popes, in the world-city, Rome. ”

“ Now, when the day is done, they walk across the sky on each side of the Stars’ Road. It shows them the way. And when Night is over, they turn back and sail again by the Stars’ Road to call the Daybreak, that goes before the Sun. The Star that leads the way is a big bright star. He is called the Dawn’s-Heart Star, and in the dark, dark hour, before the Stars have called the Dawn, he shines—ach! baasjes, he is beautiful to behold! ”

“ Into the dreamer's heart, sad in the lonely night–
Call like the ring of steel and thrill as of bugles
blown,
Splendours of days to be, flaming in skies unknown.
Deep in the eastern skies glimmers that phantom star;
Dim in the distance dies the surge of the world afar. ”

“ We conclude therefore that the stars are seen at midnight in uncurtailed glory, but their fringes are of such a nature that the daylight can cut them off, and not only daylight, but any slight cloud which may be interposed between a star and the eye of the observer. ”

“ A star appeared in our horizon, brilliant as the sun of the morning;—in a dire moment, when every eye was expecting its increasing splendour, it suddenly sunk in night:—but the night was not eternal—the star rose again—it still illuminates our extensive sphere. ”