The planet Venus, as photographed by the Mariner X space probe in 1974.

Hello everyone –

 

The planet Venus has returned to the evening sky, visible as a brilliant starlike object above the western horizon as dusk turns into night. Venus is hard to miss, as it’s the third-brightest object in our sky, after the Sun and Moon. Here are some poems about the planet Venus in its aspect as the Evening Star, collected from some of the greatest poets of the last quarter-millennium! 😊

 

“The Evening Star”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,

Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines

The evening star, the star of love and rest!

And then anon she doth herself divest

Of all her radiant garments, and reclines

Behind the somber screen of yonder pines,

With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.

O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!

My morning and my evening star of love!

My best and gentlest lady! even thus,

As that fair planet in the sky above,

Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,

And from thy darkened window fades the light.

 

“Evening Star”

Edgar Allan Poe

 

'Twas noontide of summer,

  And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

  Shone pale, thro' the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

  'Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

  Her beam on the waves.

    I gazed awhile

    On her cold smile;

Too cold- too cold for me-

  There passed, as a shroud,

  A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

  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.

 

“To the Evening Star”

By William Blake

 

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wing sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,

 

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And the lion glares through the dun forest.

The fleeces of our flocks are covered with

Thy sacred dew; protect with them with thine influence.

 

“To the Planet Venus, An Evening Star” – Composed At Loch Lomond

By William Wordsworth

 

Though joy attend Thee orient at the birth

Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most

To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth,

In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost,

Perplexed as if between a splendor lost

And splendor slowly mustering. Since the Sun,

The absolute, the world-absorbing One,

Relinquished half his empire to the host

Emboldened by thy guidance, holy Star,

Holy as princely, who that looks on thee,

Touching, as now, in thy humility

The mountain borders of this seat of care,

Can question that thy countenance is bright,

Celestial Power, as much with love as light?

 

“Evening Star”

By H. P. Lovecraft

 

I saw it from that hidden, silent place

Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.

It shone through all the sunset’s glories—thin

At first, but with a slowly brightening face.

Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,

Beat on my sight as never it did of old;

The evening star—but grown a thousandfold

More haunting in this hush and solitude.

 

It traced strange pictures on the quivering air—

Half-memories that had always filled my eyes—

Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies

Of some dim life—I never could tell where.

But now I knew that through the cosmic dome

Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.

 

Happy stargazing! 😊

Rob

 

The Many Faces of Mercury & Hermes Trismegistus

Hello everyone –

Today, I would like to pay tribute all the ACES James Scholar alumni out there who have entered a healthcare profession, especially listmember A.M.T., an amazing M.D. who is celebrating her birthday today. Here’s an article about the “Many Faces of Mercury,” showing how that word has permeated the sciences – from the eightieth chemical element to alchemy and pharmacology, and from the innermost planet of the Solar System to Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary sage of ancient Egypt who was reputed to be a physician of the body and of the soul. Some medieval historians and Renaissance philosophers identified him with the biblical patriarch Enoch, whereas modern Egyptologists would view him as a hybrid of the Egyptian deity Thoth and the Greek deity Hermes (a/k/a the Roman deity Mercury). It is also possible that the figure of Hermes Trismegistus was based on the historical figure of Imhotep (fl. 27^th century BCE), the first known polymath in world history, whose medical “textbook” is preserved in the Edwin Smith papyrus.

 

“The Many Faces of Mercury”

By Rob Chappell

(Adapted & Condensed from Cursus Honorum IX: 3 [October 2008]

                The planet Mercury made headlines earlier this month when it was visited by NASA’s MESSENGER probe.  Mercury is the smallest major planet in the Solar System; it is also the closest planet to the Sun.  It completes one orbit of our parent star every 88 days, but it rotates on its axis every 59 days – so its “day” lasts for two-thirds of its “year.”  Because Mercury has an extremely thin atmosphere, temperatures on its surface can vary between 800 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime to -300 degrees at night.  Needless to say, life as we know it probably doesn’t exist here.

This enhanced photo of the planet Mercury was taken by NASA’s MESSENGER probe on January 14, 2008.  (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

                Astronomical observations of Mercury are documented from the 14th century BCE onward.  Because Mercury always appears within 28 degrees of the Sun in our sky, it is only visible to the naked eye either just before Sunrise or just after Sunset.  Whether known as Hermes (to the Greeks) or Mercury (to the Romans), the innermost planet in our Solar System was named after the swift messenger of the Olympian pantheon because of its rapid movement through the sky.  Mercury was portrayed in art as wearing a pair of winged sandals and carrying a caduceus (a wand with two serpents entwined around it).

                The planet Mercury ceased to be worshiped in the Western world during late antiquity.  However, the planet named after him continued to be studied by medieval astronomers, who drew up increasingly accurate tables of its motions in the sky.  Starting in the 12th century CE, debate ensued among astronomers as to whether Mercury orbited around the Earth (as theorized by most Greek astronomers) or around the Sun (as proposed by a few late antique Roman writers).

                Mercury’s name was also given by the ancients to chemical element #80 – a liquid metal also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.  Discovered in early historic times, mercury was believed to have both medical and metallurgical applications.  Unfortunately, liquid mercury is poisonous to humans if ingested, and that is what led to the untimely demise of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Dì (259-210 BCE): he drank a mercury-and-jade potion that was supposed to have restored his lost youth!  In modern times, mercury has been used in thermometers, barometers, and other scientific and medical instruments.

                Perhaps Mercury’s most enduring “face” has been that of the legendary Egyptian alchemist, philosopher, and physician – Hermes Trismegistus (“Mercurius Termaximus” in Latin = “Thrice-Greatest Hermes”).  A collection of philosophical and alchemical treatises began to circulate under his name during the first three centuries CE in Alexandria, Egypt – produced by a group of scholars and sages known as the Hermetic School.  The Hermetic tractates preserved Egyptian esoteric traditions about the origin of the cosmos and humankind’s place within it.  In these treatises, Hermes Trismegistus dialogues with his disciples and encourages them to transmit his knowledge to posterity for the benefit of humankind.  After their translation into Latin by the Italian polymath, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Hermetic writings exercised a profound influence upon the Renaissance intellectuals who spearheaded the scientific revolution.  Such intellectual advancements were perhaps foreseen by one of the Hermetic philosophers of ancient Egypt:

“[Humankind] will pursue the inmost secrets of Nature even into the heights and will study the motions of the sky.  Nor is this enough; when nothing yet remains to be known than the furthest boundary of the Earth, they will seek even there the last extremities of night.”  -- Cor Mundi (Heart of the Cosmos), Hermetic Tractate, Early 1st Millennium CE

Editor’s Note: A replica of an Italian Renaissance statue of Hermes Trismegistus carrying the caduceus, an ancient symbol of the healing arts that is still used by medical practitioners today, stands in the lobby of the Carle Forum in Urbana.

 

“Hermes Trismegistus”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Still through Egypt's desert places
    Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
    Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
    Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
    Solemn, stony eyes. 

But where are the old Egyptian
    Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
    Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
    Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
    Who their secrets held? 

Where are now the many hundred
    Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
    Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
    As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
   Sinks the scattered sand. 

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
    Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
    Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
    To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
    In a land of dreams. 

Was he one, or many, merging
    Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
    Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
    Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
    From unnumbered lakes. 

By the Nile I see him wandering,
    Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
    Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
    With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
    Lift men to their height. 

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
    In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
    A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
    In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
    Of Olympian song. 

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
    Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
    Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
   Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
    Human and divine? 

Trismegistus! three times greatest!
    How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
    Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
    Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
    Still their name survives! 

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
    Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered somber, stately,
    Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
    On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
    Breathed, and was no more.

Until next time – keep looking up! 😊

Rob

 

Did Brendan the Navigator Reach North America?

Hello everyone –

The 4^th of July is almost here – a time to celebrate all that our nation has achieved over the last 245 years, and all that we have yet to achieve as the future unrolls before us. As we look back on our history, we remember that this continent was initially discovered and settled by the First Nations, whose lineages go back into prehistoric times – at least as far back as the last Ice Age. But who were the first Europeans to reach the Americas? It wasn’t Columbus and his crew in 1492; nor was it the Vikings in 1000; instead, it might have been an Irish monk and his companions in the 6^th century CE!

Here, as a special historical treat, is a poem about St. Brendan the Navigator and his voyages around the Atlantic Ocean – a poem that celebrates both the exhilarations and the hardships of discovering a whole new world.

 

“The Death of Saint Brendan” (Published 1955)
by J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

At last out of the deep seas he passed,
and mist rolled on the shore;
under clouded moon the waves were loud,
as the laden ship him bore
to Ireland, back to wood and mire,
to the tower tall and grey,
where the knell of Cluian-ferta’s bell
tolled in the green Galway.
Where Shannon down to Lough Derg ran
under a rainclad sky
Saint Brendan came to his journey’s end
to await his hour to die.

‘O! tell me, father, for I loved you well,
if still you have words for me,
of things strange in the remembering
in the long and lonely sea,
of islands by deep spells beguiled
where dwell the Elven-kind:
in seven long years the road to Heaven
or the Living Land did you find?’

‘The things I have seen, the many things,
have long now faded far;
only three come clear now back to me:
a Cloud, a Tree, a Star.
We sailed for a year and a day and hailed
no field nor coast of mean;
no boat nor bird saw we ever afloat
for forty days and ten.
We saw no sun at set or dawn,
but a dun cloud lay ahead,
and a drumming there was like thunder coming
and a gleam of fiery red.

Upreared from sea to cloud then sheer
a shoreless mountain stood;
its sides were black from the sullen tide
to the red lining of its hood.
No cloak of cloud, no lowering smoke,
no looming storm of thunder
in the world of men saw I ever unfurled
like the pall that we passed under.
We turned away, and we left astern
the rumbling and the gloom;
then the smoking cloud asunder broke,
and we saw the Tower of Doom:
in its ashen head was a crown of red,
where the fishes flamed and fell.
Tall as a column in High Heaven’s hall,
its feet were deep as Hell;
grounded in chasms the water drowned
and buried long ago,
it stands, I ween, in forgotten lands
where the kings of kings lie low.

We sailed then on, till the wind had failed,
and we toiled then with the oar,
and hunger and thirst us sorely wrung,
and we sang our psalms no more.
A land at last with a silver strand
at the end of strength we found;
the waves were singing in pillared caves
and pearls lay on the ground;
and steep the shores went upward leaping
to slopes of green and gold,
and a stream out of rich and teeming
through a coomb of shadow rolled.

Through gates of stone we rowed in haste,
and passed and left the sea;
and silence like dew fell in that isle,
and holy it seemed to be.
As a green cup, deep in a brim of green,
that with wine the white sun fills
was the land we found, and we saw there stand
on a laund between the hills
a tree more fair than ever I deemed
might climb in Paradise;
its foot was like a great tower’s root,
it height beyond men’s eyes;
so wide its branches, the least could hold
in shade an acre long,
and they rose as steep as mountain-snows
those boughs so broad and strong;
for white as a winter to my sight
the leaves of that tree were,
they grew more close than swan-wing plumes,
all long and soft and fair.

We deemed then, maybe, as in a dream,
that time had passed away
and our journey ended; for no return
we hoped, but there to stay.
In the silence of that hollow isle,
in the stillness, then we sang-
softly us seemed, but the sound aloft
like a pealing organ rang.
Then trembled the tree from crown to stem;
from the limbs the leaves in air
as white birds fled in wheeling flight,
and left the branches bare.
From the sky came dropping down on high
a music not of bird,
not voice of man, nor angel’s voice;
but maybe there is a third
fair kindred in the world yet lingers
beyond the foundered land.
Yet steep are the seas and the waters deep
beyond the White-tree Strand.’

‘O! stay now father! There’s more to say.
But two things you have told:
The Tree, the Cloud; but you spoke of three.
The Star in mind you hold?’
‘The Star? Yes, I saw it, high and far,
at the parting of the ways,
a light on the edge of the Outer Night
like silver set ablaze,
where the round world plunges steeply down,
but on the old road goes,
as an unseen bridge that on the arches runs
to coasts than no man knows.’

‘But men say, father, that ere the end
you went where none have been.
I would here you tell me, father dear,
of the last land you have seen.’

‘In my mind the Star I still can find,
and the parting of the seas,
and the breath as sweet and keen as death
that was borne upon the breeze.
But where they bloom those flowers fair,
in what air or land they grow,
what words beyond the world I heard,
if you would seek to know,
in a boat then, brother, far afloat
you must labor in the sea,
and find for yourself things out of mind:
you will learn no more of me.’

In Ireland, over wood and mire,
in the tower tall and grey,
the knell of Cluain-ferta’s bell
was tolling in green Galway.
Saint Brendan had come to his life’s end
under a rainclad sky,
and journeyed whence no ship returns,
and his bones in Ireland lie.

(from The Notion Club Papers: History of Middle Earth, vol. 9, 1992 edition.)

Happy Independence Day! 😊

Rob