Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/Hymn to the Moon

Hymn to the Moon.

How lovely is this silent scene! How beautiful, fair lamp of Night!On stirless woods, and lakes serene. Thou sheddest forth thy holy light,With beam as pure, with ray as bright, As Sorrow's tear from woman's breast,When mourning over days departed, That robbed her spirit of its rest,And left her lone and broken-hearted.

Refulgent pilgrim of the sky, Beneath thy march, within thy sight,What varying realms outstretching lie! Here, landscape rich with glory bright;There, lonely wastes of utter blight: The nightingale, upon the boughOf cypress, there her song is pouring; And there, begirt with mounts of snow,For food the famished bear is roaring!

The exile on a foreign shore Dejected sits, and turns his eyeTo thee, in beauty evermore, Careering through a cloudless sky:A white cloud comes, and passing by, Veils thee a moment from his sight;Then, as he rests beneath the shadows, He thinks of many as sweet a night,When glad he roamed his native meadows.

Enthroned amid the cloudless blue, Majestic, silent, and alone,Above the fountains of the dew, Thou glidest on, and glidest on.To shoreless seas, and lands unknown, The presence of thy face appears,Thou eldest born of Beauty's daughters, A spirit traversing the spheres,And ruling o'er the pathless waters.