From: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The moving Moon went up the sky.
And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside-

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
*****

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

-A nursery rhyme from the 1700's
*****

TO THE MOON

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a Joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
*****

We'll Go No More A-Roving
Though the night was made for loving
And the day returns too soon
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon

-Byron
*****

From: Sing-Song

0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east;
Shine, be increased:
0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west;
Wane, be at rest.

by Christina Rossetti
*****

see the moon,
The moon sees me
God bless the moon,
And God bless me.

-A nursery rhyme
*****

NEW MOON

The new moon, of no importance
lingers behind as the yellow sun glares
and is gone beyond the sea's edge;
earth smokes blue;
the new moon, in cool height above the blushes,
brings a fresh fragrance of heaven to our senses.

By D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
*****

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

- Walter de la Mare
*****

I saw the new moon late yestreen,
Wi' the auld moon in her arm:
And if ye gang to sea, maister,
I fear we'll suffer harm.

From the Scottish ballad Sir Patrick Spens
*****

Moonlight


As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruined haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
In all the splendour of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,
The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
Is clothed with a diviner air;
White marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion! Underneath there lies
The common life of everyday;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober grey.

In vain we look, in vain uplift
Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind;
We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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