~*~ MoonLight ~*~ As a pale phantom with a lamp * acends 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 * 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. ~*~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~*~ You Meaner Beauties of the Night ~*~You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes * More by your number than your light * You common people of the skies * What are you when the moon shall rise?" * You curious chanters of the wood * That warble forth Dame Nature's lays * Thinking your voices understoo* By your weak accents; what's your praise * When Philomel her voice shall raise? * You violets that first appear, * By your pure purple mantles known * Like the proud virgins of the year * As if the spring were all your own * What are you when the rose is blown? * So, when my mistress shall be seen * In form and beauty of her mind * By virtue first, then choice, a queen * Tell me, if she were not design'd * Th' eclipse and glory of her kind? ~*~ Sir Henry Watton ~*~ A Sonnet of the Moon ~*~ Look how the pale queen of the silent night * Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her * And he, as long as she is in his sight * With her full tide is ready her to honor * But when the silver waggon of the moon * Is mounted up so high he cannot follow * The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan * And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow * So you that are the sovereign of my heart * Have all my joys attending on your will * My joys low-ebbing when you do depart * When you return their tide my heart doth fill * So as you come and as you do depart * Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart ~*~ Charels Best ~*~ The Moon ~*~ And, like a dying lady lean and pale * Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil * Out of her chamber, led by the insane * And feeble wanderings of her fading brain * The moon arose up in the murky east * A white and shapeless mass * 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? ~*~ Percy Bysshe Shelly ~*~ To the Moon ~*~ Queen of the stars! * so gentle, so benign * That ancient Fable did to thee assign * When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow * Warned thee these upper regions to forego * Alternate empire in the shades below * A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea * Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee * With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail * From the close confines of a shadowy vale * Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene * Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen * Through cloudy umbrage * well might that fair face * And all those attributes of modest grace * In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear * Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere * To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear * O still beloved (for thine, meek Power, are charms * That fascinate the very Babe in arms * While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright * Spreading his little palms in his glad Mother's sight * O still beloved, once worshipped! * Time, that frowns * In his destructive flight on earthly crowns * Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams * Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams * With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise * Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays * And through dark trials still dost thou explore * Thy way for increase punctual as of yore * When teeming Matrons - yielding to rude faith * In mysteries of birth and life and death * And painful struggle and deliverance - prayed * Of thee to visit them with lenient aid * What though the rites be swept away, the fanes * Extinct that echoed to the votive strains * Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease * Love to promote and purity and peace * And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace * Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face * Then silent Monitress! let us - not blind * To worlds unthought of till the searching mind * Of Science laid them open to mankind * Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare * God's glory; and acknowledging thy share * In that blest charge; let us - without offence * To aught of highest, holiest, influence * Receive whatever good 'tis given thee to dispense * May sage and simple, catching with one eye * The moral intimations of the sky * Learn from thy course, where'er their own be taken * "To look on tempests, and be never shaken;" * To keep with faithful step the appointed way * Eclipsing or eclipsed, by night or day* And from example of thy monthly range * Gently to brook decline and fatal change * Meek, patient, stedfast, and with loftier scope * Than thy revival yields, for gladsome hope! ~*~ Willian Wordsworth ~*~ Faint White Shadows ~*~ You call to me * That kind glow in the midsts or vicious stars * With gracefull fingers you touch every thing * That which was dull has now a silver shadow* You cast out a Faint Shadow * White is your face * Pure are your games * Games of Disception * You give each and everything a task to hold * To hold your Faint White Shadow * I am here to frolic with the cloak you gave me * But I can no longer determine right from wrong * I have it, your Faint Whit Shadow * Is this a gift or a burden? * My Gentle Queen of Shadows ~*~ Stella Flos ~*~
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