In Moonlight
The man in the moon woke me up last night, as surely as if he had rapped on my window. Having made his way across the back garden during the night, he topped the trees surrounding the house and popped, full strength, through the lace curtains, past sleeping Edward, and right into my eyes like a winking giant. It’s hard to be miffed over some lost sleep when the garden atmosphere created by a full moon is so lovely. I had to get up and take a look. The deep shadows, the glow of the white flowers, the otherworldly light a full moon provides enables an alternate reality to exist in one’s very own garden. No wonder Vita Sackville-West created her famed white garden at Sissinghurst. She obviously appreciated the grand old man in the moon, as well. Can you imagine that garden in moonlight? Atkinson Grimshaw, whose painting, Silver Moonlight, is above, created many magical pictures of moonlight, and Longfellow must have experienced a moonlit night or two in his time, as evidenced by his sublime poem on the topic.
There’s a full moon tonight. Remember to take a look!
MOONLIGHT
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's 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 splendor 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;
While marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.
Illusion! Underneath there lies
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober gray.
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.
The man in the moon woke me up last night, as surely as if he had rapped on my window. Having made his way across the back garden during the night, he topped the trees surrounding the house and popped, full strength, through the lace curtains, past sleeping Edward, and right into my eyes like a winking giant. It’s hard to be miffed over some lost sleep when the garden atmosphere created by a full moon is so lovely. I had to get up and take a look. The deep shadows, the glow of the white flowers, the otherworldly light a full moon provides enables an alternate reality to exist in one’s very own garden. No wonder Vita Sackville-West created her famed white garden at Sissinghurst. She obviously appreciated the grand old man in the moon, as well. Can you imagine that garden in moonlight? Atkinson Grimshaw, whose painting, Silver Moonlight, is above, created many magical pictures of moonlight, and Longfellow must have experienced a moonlit night or two in his time, as evidenced by his sublime poem on the topic.
There’s a full moon tonight. Remember to take a look!
MOONLIGHT
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's 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 splendor 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;
While marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.
Illusion! Underneath there lies
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober gray.
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.
