The Moon.
Serenely, O moon, thou art beaming to-night,
Tracking the sea with thy silvery light;
Piercing the forest, thy beautiful rays
Are patching the ground in fantastical ways.
On city, on hamlet, on palace and hut,
On the far-stretching plain, in the deep mountain cut,
Thy mellow beams softly on all alike fall;
O, queen of the night, thou hast homage from all:
From the glistening dew, from the true lover’s sigh,
From the cricket’s shrill voice and the katy-did’s cry;
Thy heart-soft’ning power all races have felt;
To thy soothing appeal the most callous must melt.
O mute sympathizer, invoker of tales,
A fleet of heart secrets each night to thee sails.
To the shipwrecked at sea, when the storm clears away
And calm night succeeds the wild, boisterous day,
All huddled on raft, or faint clinging to spar,
There’s a hope in thy beams that no danger can mar.
When red in the east thou ascendest the sky,
And thy disc meets the half-naked savage’s eye,
He pauses, and feels as he views thy bright light
That a Greater than he is displaying His might.
Ere since by Omnipotence whirled into space,
Thou hast gladdened the night with thy radiant face.
To nations long dead, and unheard of by man,
Thou wast familiar when first they began,
Through their ages of splendor, their waning away,
Till their last mould’ring relic succumbed to decay.
And so, till Jehovah’s dread voice bids thee stay,
And the night is absorbed by Eternity’s day,
Thou shalt in thine orbit thy mission pursue,
A bright silver ship in an ocean of blue.