Urania, the heavenly one, is allotted astronomy in the systematized scheme of the Muses, shown with a celestial globe and a pointer or compasses and her gaze turned upward. The pairing of a Muse with the study of the stars suited a Greek culture that did not separate the mathematical from the poetic as sharply as later ages would, and it gave Urania a second life once natural philosophy and sacred poetry sought a patron. Renaissance and early modern writers made her the Muse of specifically Christian and philosophical verse: Du Bartas wrote a poem urging poets to serve L'Uranie, and Milton, at the opening of the seventh book of Paradise Lost, invokes Urania by name while carefully insisting that he means the meaning of the name and not the pagan goddess.
Through that reception she became the muse of the sublime and the astronomical alike. Milton's careful distinction in Paradise Lost, invoking "the meaning, not the name" of Urania, reflects a broader Christian humanist unease, shared by earlier poets such as Du Bartas, about openly invoking a pagan goddess while still wanting the prestige of the classical Muse tradition for serious religious verse. This same instinct later shaped the astronomical use of Urania's name, given to observatories and learned societies, such as Berlin's Urania Society founded in 1888, that used her figure as an emblem of scientific rather than poetic or religious aspiration.