Venus and a fallen star of 1865
Observing last night between rapidly drifting clouds I was once again stunned by the incredible brightness of Venus in the west. This morning, just at sunrise, as I walked around the yard I paused to admire and smell the lilacs – and immediately those words of Walt Whitman jumped into my head.
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
The “him I love,” was, of course Abraham Lincoln, assassinated April 21, 1865. The “great star” I have always assumed was Venus. But on a whim, as Whitman’s words came back to me once more, I decided to check. Where was Venus on April 21, 1865? Was it really low in the Western sky? Or perhaps Whitman wrote these words at a later time when it was. The memory of it, I’m sure, came back for him with “ever-returning spring,” but – of course - Venus is not so constant. It may or may not be there on any given spring evening. And, I might add, my lilacs probably bloom significantly later than those in Washington, DC., so I’m out of sync by a month.
In any event, I went to my Starry Night software and set it for April 21, 1865, and there, sure enough, was Venus, shining as brightly as it does these nights, low in the western sky.
View sky map for April 21, 1865 from Starry Nights.
What a wonderful symbol for the fallen president, a westerner himself! And what a reminder for me of how, in those days, the night sky was more likely to be integrated into the lives of ordinary people. You can see this sort of integration in the classic 1903 book written by Martha evas Martin, “The Firendly Stars.” She makes constant references that interlock the events of our daily lives, with the stars – not in some astrological fancy, but just as part of the natural rhythms of our lives.
And I have to wonder - despite all of our books, planetariums, and science education – how many people today can relate to Whitman’s references? Bright as Venus is in the Western sky these evenings, how many people know that it is Venus – or for that matter, even raise their eyes to see it and wonder?
Actually, Whitman had been conscious of Venus well before the assassination, or so he writes – and that too matches the astronomical record.
O western orb, sailing the heaven!
55
Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walk’d,
As we walk’d up and down in the dark blue so mystic,
As we walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop’d from the sky low down, as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on;)
60
As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something, I know not what, kept me from sleep;)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west, ere you went, how full you were of woe;
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cold transparent night,
As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb,
65
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
That spring of 1865 Venus was quite high in the Western sky before the assassination. But each night it was getting lower and lower – and hauntingly, by the time Lincoln’s funeral train had made it’s slow journey homeward and at last he was buried, Venus was setting just 45 minutes after the sun, visible only during twilight.
As you think about it, one can almost see the funeral train, winding westward, towards a “star” that got lower and lower each night, it’s blaze being dimmed as it neared the horizon and the sun. What an appropriate synmbol!
On these spring and summer evening in 2007, Venus will be with us longer. In fact, it will continue to shine higher and brighter until June 9. Then it will slowly get lower and lower each night, until it takes a real nose dive in mid-July and will be lost in the glare of the Sun by early August. In September it starts climbing higher in the morning sky.
But once having read Whitman’s poem, it’s hard not to see Venus as that symbol of the fallen star from the west.