Venus

“ Venus has become a celestial Earth, our sister and neighbour, and the better-informed eyes which contemplate it to-day see in her, not, like Homer and Manilius, a luminous point shining above our heads and controlling the feelings of our hearts and the movement of our blood, but a world corresponding to the world we ourselves inhabit, gravitating like us round the same sun, living on the same light and heat, and fit like ours to bear a thinking race for whom the Earth we inhabit is itself a star in the sky. ”

“ It is a beautifully clear evening; the sun has just set. The lover of nature turns to admire the sunset, as every lover of nature will. In the golden glory of the west a beauteous gem is seen to glitter; it is the evening star—the planet Venus. A few weeks later another beautiful sunset is seen, and now the planet is no longer a point low down in the western glow; it has risen high above the horizon, and continues a brilliant object long after the shades of night have descended. Again, a little later, and Venus has gained its full brilliancy and splendour. ”

“ Such, in those clear skies, is their glittering effulgence, that the visiter from other latitudes would scarce suppose them to be the same luminaries that sparkle in their own heavens. Venus—the bright and beautiful divinity of love—appears of far greater magnitude than here,—shining with a much greater intensity of brightness—so strong indeed as to cast a shadow from the trees. ”

“ The celestial Venus, the chaste and fruitful Venus, the triple mother of the three Graces, rose in her turn, no longer from the sleeping deeps of chaos, but from the living and flowing waves of that echoing archipelago of poetry, where islands embroidered with green trees and flowers seem as the vessels of gods. ”

“ I have told how at last a new Venus was born in my imagination out of gas lamps and the twilight, a Venus with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining out of the dusk, a Venus who was a warm, passion-stirring atmosphere rather than incarnate in a body. ”

“ As I am about to turn aside into one of the green walks I see Venus sitting before me on a stone bench, not the beautiful woman of marble, but the goddess of love herself with warm blood and throbbing pulses. She has actually come to life for me, like the statue that began to breathe for her creator. Indeed, the miracle is only half completed. Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? ”

“ Our earth would blaze beneath so fierce a ray, And all its marble mountains melt away. Fair Venus next fulfils her larger round, With softer beams, and milder glory crowned; Friend to mankind, she glitters from afar, Now the bright evening, now the morning, star."—Baker. ”

“ Venus. I am Venus! I have many names in the outer world! It is I who rule the God of Love, I sway the hearts of all true lovers; in your world I have caused you poor mortals to burn for me—aye, and with an unconsuming, unquenchable fire! ”

“ Venus is the goddess of beauty, born of the ocean spray. When the tritons and nymphs who live in the sea beheld her, they loved her for her beauty, and the waves and gentle breezes bore her to Olympus.
Venus is attended by three maidens called the Graces, who give to the beauty of the goddess a charm which makes her lovely to all.
When she came to Olympus, all the gods loved her, but she proudly rejected the eager suitors. ”

“ Exceeding, as the Venus does beyond all competition, every image of loveliness painted or sculptured that one has ever before seen, the fancy leaves the eye gazing upon it, and busies itself irresistibly with its pregnant atmosphere of recollections. ”

“ The sun has left his sentinel, Venus, soon to descend, with her evening charms, after delighting her admirers only a short while. The atmosphere at sea being so pure, this planet looks as though it had silver steps leading to its portals, upon which fancy might climb without wings, or the Muses catch inspiration without effort. ”

“ The inhabitants of Venus see us shining in their sky like a magnificent star of the first magnitude, soaring in the zodiac, and showing motions similar to those which the planet Mars presents to us; but instead of showing a reddish brightness, the earth shines in the sky as a bluish light. ”

“ We seemed as much nearer the stars as we were further away from mankind. Venus was like a diamond cut out of the sun, and she lifted an unearthly splendour high into the sooty devouring darkness of the night. ”

“ Venus, a dozen foreign departments of the Centennial, ancient garrets and modern household art stores, all tumbled together in hopeless confusion, and over all an emerald, golden halo that grew more and more concentrated till it burst into gloom as one gigantic sunflower, which, suddenly changing into the full moon just rising above the top of a neighboring roof, put an end to his chaotic dreams. ”

“ We do not say that there is any caprice in the movements of Venus, as known to those who diligently consult their almanacs. The movements of the lovely planet are there prescribed with a prosaic detail hardly in harmony with the character usually ascribed to the Goddess of Love. But to those who do not devote particular attention to the stars, the very unexpectedness of its appearance is one of its greatest charms. Venus has not been noticed, not been thought of, for many months. ”

“ The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta Venus, and affords a happy specimen of what the poetry of passion ought to be—glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is impervious to every beam but that of fancy. ”

“ It is open, at least to the writers of the interplanetary romances now so popular, to imagine that on Venus, life, while encompassed with the serenity that results from the circular form of her orbit, and the unchangeableness of her climates, is richer, warmer, more passionate, more exquisite in its forms and more fascinating in its experiences, keener of sense, capable of more delicious joys, than is possible to it amid the manifold inclemencies of the colder earth. ”

“ TALES OF A BRAVE ULYSSES Artists (astrologers never lie) are birthed when Venus is rising-- not against cat's whelp (eye of newt, tongue of frog) calamitous mist or London fog; far, ferny forbidding fenn. When Venus rises, yes dons Botticelli's cloak or was it her hair gathered in tresses long by lovely handfuls parading it all on a patty shell --her twin oysters ambrosia a Ulyssean mirroring winedark sea, purpling color of a robin's egg. Artists are born in something of Venus . ”

“ This ethereal Venus is the immaculate glorious woman whose absolute beauty the greatest poets, writers, painters, sculptors and musicians have striven to express in words, in form, in colour and in sound. Thus is Venus the noble cogency of divine pure love which has been striving through all the ages to make the world a paradise and to bring man back again to the Eden he has lost. No blood sacrifices stained the altars of this 41lovely goddess, and the ancients delighted in bringing to her temples sweet blossoms and fragrant spices for incense. ”

“ THE PLANET VENUS.—Camille Flammarion Revolving round the sun in 224 days, Venus has its motion combined with ours in such a manner that it passes its inferior conjunction, between the sun and us, every 584 days; but the plane in which it revolves is inclined 3° 23′ to that in which the earth itself moves. When Venus attains its greatest elongations from the sun it shines in the west in the evening, then in the morning in the east, with a splendid brightness which eclipses that of all the stars. It is, without comparison, the most magnificent star of our sky. ”

“ That Venus, with her swift-winged boy, who traverses the earth and ocean, subdues the stubborn hearts of Gods and men: inspiring into all, on whom her influence rests, whether inhabitants of the land or deep, and more especially the race of man, a soft and sympathizing tenderness ”

“ In order to comprehend how great the earth must appear from Venus when the two are in line with the sun, it will only be necessary the coming winter to look at Venus herself, shortly after sundown—at the same time remembering that the splendor which dazzles our eyes comes from but a small fraction of the illuminated surface of that planet, while the earth as seen from Venus will show its whole round face like a full moon! ”

“ Even the light of the full moon silvering the tree tops does not exercise greater enchantment over the mind of the contemplative observer. In either of her rôles, as morning or as evening star, Venus has no rival. No fixed star can for an instant bear comparison with her. What she lacks in vivacity of light—none of the planets twinkles, as do all of the true stars—is more than compensated by the imposing size of [Pg 49] her gleaming disk and the striking beauty of her clear lamplike rays. ”

“ Not Mars, for that planet was far in the heavens. But Venus!—misnamed for the Goddess of Love. It was Venus, and she alone, who by any stretch of the imagination could be threatening Earth. [189]
What did it mean? They had no answer. The ship was the only answer to that. Would there be more?—could we meet them?—defeat them? And again the wise men of the world refused to hazard a guess.
But they told what they knew; that Venus was past her eastern elongation, was approaching the earth. ”

“ When Venus rose out of the foam and froth of Ocean it was upon the prow of a Phœnician trader, that carried her into every part of the known world; and when her worship fell away and her votaries became few, the cult of Venus Pandemos still flourished at Corinth, and her temples there were served by a thousand priestesses. There she loves to have her abiding place, where she can look out upon two seas, and watch the sail-winged ships bringing her tribute from distant lands; she is the lure, beckoning them over the pathless sea. ”

“ And in the beautiful evenings when she is at her greatest distance from our Sun, the whole world admires this white and dazzling Venus reigning as sovereign over our twilight [10] for hours after sunset, and in addition to the savants who are practically occupied with astronomy, millions of eyes are raised to this celestial splendor, and for a moment millions of human beings feel some curiosity about the mysteries of the Infinite. ”

“ The very name of Venus, for example, and still more the sight of Venus, will call up a conception of Venus, with the particular atmosphere and light and movements and wanderings which make her what she is. On looking at her the observer will at once know why she occupies the special position in the sky in which he sees her, why she is not so bright as she was when she was last in view, or is so much brighter than she was then, about how long she is likely to remain where she is, and when she goes what will become of her. ”

“ The splendor of Venus, when at her best, will prevent you at such times from mistaking this planet for an ordinary star. She is then more than twenty times as bright as any star in the heavens. The most conclusive proof of the unrivalled brightness of Venus is found in the fact that she can be recognized in broad daylight without a telescope. Even on the brightest152 June afternoons the lovely planet is sometimes to be discerned like a morsel of white cloud on the perfect azure of the sky. ”

“ Thus the planet always presents the same face toward the sun and on that side there is perpetual day while on the other side is night - unbroken and cold beyond all imagination.
Venus resembles the earth more nearly than any other heavenly body. ”

“ As the path of Venus lies inside that of the earth, and as Venus moves more quickly than the earth, it follows that the earth is frequently passed by the planet, and just at the critical moment it will sometimes happen that the earth, the planet, and the sun lie in the same straight line. We can then see Venus on the face of the sun, and this is the phenomenon which we call the transit of Venus. ”

“ But a little before sunset—namely, about thirty-five minutes past three—the sun bursting forth from behind the clouds, he at once began to observe, and was gratified by beholding the pleasing spectacle of Venus upon the sun's disk. Rapt in contemplation, he stood for some time motionless, scarcely trusting his own senses, through excess of joy; for we astronomers have, as it were, a womanish disposition, and are overjoyed with trifles, and such small matters as scarcely make an impression upon others ”

“ Venus was the planet of love, Mars, of war and hostility, the sun, of power and honor, and so forth. Each was mysteriously connected with a certain color, with a metal, too, the alchemists said, and each had special power over some organ of the human body. The planet’s influence was believed to vary greatly according to its position in the heavens, so that to determine a man’s destiny accurately it was necessary to consider the aspect of the whole heavens, especially at the moment of his birth, but also at other times. ”

“ In short, all observers of Venus agree in thinking that her atmosphere, to a greater or less extent, serves as a mask to conceal her real features, and the possibilities of so extensive an atmosphere with reference to an adjustment of the peculiar conditions of the planet to the requirements of life upon it, are almost unlimited. If we could accurately analyze that atmosphere we would have a basis for more exact conclusions concerning Venus's habitability. ”

“ Though Venus exhibits such pretty crescents in the telescope, yet I must say that in other respects a view of the planet is rather disappointing. Venus is adorned by such a very bright dress of sunbeams that we can see but little more than those sunbeams, and we can hardly make out anything of the actual nature of the planet itself. We can sometimes discern faint marks159 upon the globe, but it is impossible even to make a conjecture of what the Venus country is like. ”