Happy Birthdays to Plato, Quotemail, & Zenaida :)

 Hello everyone –

 

Monday, November 8^th marks the 26^th birthday of the Quotemail emailing list AND the 26^h birthday of my younger cousin, Zenaida. In honor of these two birthdays, and the longstanding interest in astronomy that I share with many of our list members, here’s a selection of my favorite poems about the stars. We begin with an invocation to Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy, and we conclude with an epigram by the greatest Greek philosopher of  all time, Plato, in honor of his birthday on November 7^th. 😊

 

From Paradise Lost: Book 7, Lines 1-20

By John Milton (1608-1674)

 

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwellest; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering: with like safety guided down
Return me to my native element:
Lest from this flying steed unreined, (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime,)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn.

 

“Out of the mists which surround the remote past, a Universe of stars has appeared. And here we are on the Earth, this planet of ours, while all around and above us, Nature is staging a grand play of events, inviting our interest in the wonderful Universe in which we live.”

– Robert H. Baker (1883-1964), Third Director of the University of Illinois Observatory (1923-1951): When the Stars Come Out (1934)

 

“The Heart of Night”

By Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

 

When all the stars are sown

Across the night-blue space,

With the immense unknown,

In silence face to face.

We stand in speechless awe

While Beauty marches by,

And wonder at the Law

Which wears such majesty.

How small a thing is man

In all that world-sown vast,

That he should hope or plan

Or dream his dream could last!

O doubter of the light,

Confused by fear and wrong,

Lean on the heart of night

And let love make thee strong!

The Good that is the True

Is clothed with Beauty still.

Lo, in their tent of blue,

The stars above the hill!

 

“Stars”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 

Alone in the night on a dark hill

With pines around me spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars over my head,

White and topaz and misty red;

Myriads with beating hearts of fire

That aeons cannot vex or tire;

Up the dome of heaven like a great hill,

I watch them marching stately and still,

And I know that I am honored to be

Witness of so much majesty.

 

“Stars”

By Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (1883-1922)

 

Now in the West the slender Moon lies low,

And now Orion glimmers through the trees,

Clearing the Earth with even pace and slow,

And now the stately-moving Pleiades,

In that soft infinite darkness overhead

Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

 

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,

Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,

And planet-dust upon the edge of space,

Look down upon the fretful world, and I

Look up to outer vastness unafraid

And see the stars which sang when Earth was made.

 

“It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.”

-- Plato (427-347 BCE)

Plato, as depicted in "The School of Athens" by the Italian Renaissance maestro Raphael. Starting in Renaissance Europe, the custom began of celebrating Plato's birthday on November 7th with symposia, feasting, and readings from his dialogues and other writings.