The Lady Moon
The lady moon, a goddess bright,
With shoulders gleaming bare and white,
And stately head in rev'ry bowed,
Leans from her balcony of cloud
In the blue palace of the night.
Down peering from her queenly height,
She pours her soft, refulgent light
Upon a merry-making crowd-
The lady moon!
Apart, a maid and lover-wight,
Their troth with eager tremblings plight-
Lips meet, and solemn vows are vowed
The while, serenely fair and proud,
Smiles sweet approval of the sight-
The lady moon!
Moonrise
I saw the round moon rising from the sea,
One summer evening from a lonely isle
Hard by the northern coast. A ruined pile,
Seat of some ancient lord of Brittany,
Revealed its lines in ghostly tracery,
As o'er the placid waves for many a mile
The mellow moonlight, 'like a silver Nile,'
Came floating, flowing, pulsing down to me.
I stood in mute bewilderment, entranced;
That throbbing mystery, the ocean, seemed
With all its might and mystery enhanced,
In the white radiance over all that streamed;
And the enchantment, as the night advanced,
Was deeper, sweeter than my soul had dreamed!
