The Star

“ This star glowed as brightly as the planet Venus, which outshines every star in the sky. It was so bright that it was even visible in the daytime! This brilliancy then commenced to diminish, the star growing fainter and fainter until in about a year and a half it had completely disappeared.
While new stars have been noted during the course of centuries, the appearance of one is always so unusual that it stands out against the background of the sky with almost a disquieting effect. ”

“ Surely the STAR has stood forth as a beacon on a hill, as a lonely lamp amid surrounding darkness, to light the weary pilgrim on his toilsome journey, and to kindle up the dawn of a day of glory when the effulgent beams of the sun of righteousness shall shine forth as the morning, and dispel the misty vapors which, like a gloomy cloud, have for ages hovered over the pathway of mortals. ”

“ A star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of which was inexpressible, while its novelty struck men with astonishment. And all the rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all. ”

“ The Stars.
In the great body of nature-myth the stars are prominent members. In their multitude; their sublime repose in upper calms above the turmoil of the elements; their varying brilliancy, “one star differing from another star in glory”; their tremulous light; their scattered positions, which lend themselves to every vagary of the constellation-maker; their slow procession, varied only by sweeping comet and meteor, or falling showers of shooting stars; they lead the imagination into gentler ways than do the vaster bodies of the most ancient heavens. ”

“ One star down quite low, near the horizon, and one almost in a straight line above, and one at either side equal distances apart, like an old four-cornered kite. You must imagine the cross. But it’s hardly what it’s cracked up to be!” And we blink at the stars, and they blink at us, and we feel strangely unreal and turned about. ”

“ The stars ran loose about the sky, Wasting their beauty recklessly, Singing and dancing, Shooting and prancing, Until the Pole Star took command, Changing each wild, disordered band Into a lamp to guide the land-- A constellation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years? ”

“ But we must climb, and see! the mist is gone.
The stars are shining clear...
Think, son, your mother's at the top;
And you'll be up in no time. See, that star,
The brightest star that ever shone,
Just think it's she who watches you;
And knows that you'll be brave and true.
Come, lad: we may not stop... ”

“ It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In a thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to them forever. ”

“ The "Saturn," the star in the external world, exists, you see, for all beholders. It is a world, with its own definable characters. But the star of the inner world,—that has a right to its own incommunicably mysterious love-colors and sweet caprices. ”

“ Each star was a thing apart from all other stars, a sacred inviolate thing. On the earth, under the stars everything was corrupt, the trees, flowers, grasses, the beasts of the field, men and women. They were all corrupt. ”

“ That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. ”

“ Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such a shining way from earth to Heaven, that when the child went to his solitary bed, he dreamed about the star; and dreamed that, lying where he was, he saw a train of people taken up that sparkling road by angels. And the star, opening, showed him a great world of light, where many more such angels waited to receive them. ”

“ It is difficult when we look at the star-lit heavens, suggestive as they are of solemn peace, to conceive the stupendous energy, the fierce uproar and tumult, of which even the faintest visible star in reality tells us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may be allowed, in closing our narrative of this wonderful star, to make one excursion into the region of imagination. As the news of the star passes on through space, are there any beings beyond ourselves who will take record of its appearance? ”

“ Our children and our grandchildren would still believe the star to be where it had been always, for the last rays of light, sent out by the star before it disappeared, would take hundreds of years to reach this world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From Earth I had often looked with admiring wonder at the starry firmament, and during many an evening I had drawn the imaginary lines from star to star outlining the Great Dipper, commencing with the end of the handle and finishing with the star just named at the outer edge, or rim. ”

“ Beautiful clear sunsets of rose, gold-green, and crimson, with one big, pure radiant star ever like a censor over them; every [Pg 115] night the stars more deeply and thickly sown and growing ever softer and more brilliant as the boats neared the tropics; every day dawn rich with beauty and richer for the dewy memories of the dawns that were left behind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our great sun would have shrunk to the insignificance of a star, not so bright as many of those which we see every night.
Momentous indeed is the conclusion to which we are now led. That myriad host of stars which studs our sky every night has been elevated into vast importance. Each one of those stars is itself a mighty sun, actually rivalling, and in many cases surpassing, the splendour of our own luminary. We thus open up a majestic conception of the vast dimensions of space, and of the dignity and splendour of the myriad globes by which that space is tenanted. ”

“ After once recognizing a few of these constellations or beholding through a telescope the glories of a double star or the face of a distant world, one will never again fail through indifference to raise his eyes to the heavens. There is one thing certain—if all the wondrous phenomena of visible stars could be seen on but one of the nights of our long ride about the sun, the civilized world would spend its last cent on glasses and sit up until dawn to feast its eyes on the sublimity of the spectacle. ”

“ And stars as golden blossoms;
As man looks at them from the earth,
His heart strange feelings bosoms.
And all the time more and more stars
Appear without a bound there—
And yet not ev’ry little star
Can easily be found there. ”

“ Surely it was that this tale of Starlight, Starlight Expresses and Star Caves, told as simply as running water, revealed the entire Universe—as One, and that in this mighty, splendid thing each of them nested safe and comfortable. The world was really thinking, and all lay fluttering in the grand, magnificent old Net of Stars. What people think, they are. All can think Beauty. And sympathy—to feel with everything—was the clue; for sympathy is love, and to love a star was to love a neighbour. ”

“ From this universal attention to the stars, there sprang up the myriad fancies and peculiar notions, the products of imagination, that peopled the sky with animals and quaint figures, and gave rise to the constellated stellar groups that have come down to us, and figure on the modern charts of the heavens. ”

“ A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful—and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright! ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The star Septentrion is, for the peoples of the North and above all for the shepherd, the seaman and the wayfarer, the star of stars. A hundred legends embody its mystery, its steadfast incalculable service, its unswerving isolation over the Pole. Polaris, the North Star, the Pole-Star, the Lodestar, the Seaman’s Star, the Star of the Sea, the Gate of Heaven, Phœnice, Cynosure, how many names, in all languages, at all times. ”

“ Yes, a star—bright, beautiful, and twinkling—only one solitary star, piercing the blackness of this frightful hell-cave, telling of light and air—the free air of heaven—and—he dare not add—possible deliverance. A cool breeze fans his brow, wafted through a crevice in the rock, and through the crevice he can just see that one solitary star. Even if he must die now he can still keep his gaze fixed upon that one shining eye of heaven, looking in upon him from the outer air—the sweet, blessed outer air. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As we said above, each star that we admire in the depths of the sky, and to which we lift up our eyes and thoughts during the charmed hours of the night, is another sun burning with its own light, the chief of a more or less numerous family, such as are multiplied through all space to infinity. ”

“ Only the farthest star
Is cool for willow wings.
"There's a sky within the west—
There's a sky beyond the skies
Where only one star shines—
The Star of Laughing Bells—
In Chaos-land it lies ”

“ It must be balanced by exactly as much attraction on one side as another. There must be, above, below, beyond that star, the same stupendous array of worlds, and each relatively outer star, aye, even the star on the farther side of that outer star, must in its turn, be held in the same magnificent and awful suspension. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all the others put together, is sufficiently vast to contain them. From their throne of fire, these souls, all intelligence and activity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march of all the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through space. ”

“ But all at once he became bright, and rose up to heaven as a great star. We can see it now, in the west, when the lights begin to return after the great darkness. But it is low down, and never climbs high in the sky. And we call it Nâlaussartoq: he who stands and listens. [1]
↑ The star is that which we know as Venus. "Listening": perhaps as the old man had stood listening for the breathing of the seal. ”

“ You rise, remember one man saw you,
Knew you, and named a star!
II
My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend
That loving hand of his which leads you,
Yet locks you safe from end to end
Of this dark world, unless he needs you,
Just saves your light to spend? ”

“ As even a meagre knowledge of star lore has added greatly to the writer's pleasure in the study of the stars, and has served to render their appearance full of suggestion, he has been interested in collecting for this volume a portion of that varied history of the heavens that has been presented in terms imaginative by the peoples of all ages. Those who admire the beauty of the stars may learn to love them by reason of the literary and legendary associations recalled by their appearance. ”