Moon Poems And Poetry

A collection of poems and a bit of poetry - All with a moon theme.

From The Rime of the Acient Mariner

The moving Moon went up the sky.
And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside-

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

        TO THE MOON
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?

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

-A nursery rhyme from the 1700's

Is the moon tired? she looks so pale
Within her misty veil:
She scales the sky from east to west,
And takes no rest.
Before the coming of the night
The moon shows papery white;
Before the dawning of the day
She fades away.

From Sing-Song by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

DEFEATED BY LOVE

The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon
So powerful
I fell to the ground

Your love
has made me sure

I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender to the magnificence
of your Being

- Rumi -- Thanks Anna

We'll Go No More A-Roving

Though the night was made for loving
And the day returns too soon
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon

-Byron

0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east;
Shine, be increased:
0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west;
Wane, be at rest.
From Sing-Song by Christina Rossetti

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

THE HALF MOON SHOWS
A FACE OF PLAINTIVE SWEETNESS

The half moon shows a face of plaintive sweetness
    Ready and poised to wax or wane;
A fire of pale desire in incompleteness,
    Tending to pleasure or to pain:-
Lo, while we gaze she rolleth on in fleetness
    To perfect loss or perfect gain.
Half bitterness we know, we know half sweetness;
    This world is all on wax, on wane:
When shall completeness round time's incompleteness,
    Fulfilling joy, fulfilling pain?-
Lo, while we ask, life rolleth on in fleetness
    To finished loss or finished gain.

By Christina Rossetti

I see the moon,
The moon sees me
God bless the moon,
And God bless me.

-A nursery rhyme

FULL MOON

One night as Dick lay fast asleep,
     Into his drowsy eyes
A great still light began to creep
     From out the silent skies.
It was the lovely moon's, for when
     He raised his dreamy head,
Her surge of silver filled the pane
     And streamed across his bed.
So, for a while, each gazed at each-
     Dick and the solemn moon-
Till, climbing slowly on her way,
     She vanished, and was gone.

By Walter de la Mare

Civile Conversation

They make them believe,
according to the Proverbe,
that gloe wormes are lanterns,
and that the moon is made of greene Cheese.

-Stefano Guazzo, 1574

MOON'S ENDING

Moon, worn thin to the width of a quill,
In the dawn clouds flying,
How good to go, light into light, and still
Giving light, dying.

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

NEW MOON

The new moon, of no importance
lingers behind as the yellow sun glares
and is gone beyond the sea's edge;
earth smokes blue;
the new moon, in cool height above the blushes,
brings a fresh fragrance of heaven to our senses.

By D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

I saw the new moon late yestreen,
Wi' the auld moon in her arm:
And if ye gang to sea, maister,
I fear we'll suffer harm.

From the anonymous Scottish ballad Sir Patrick Spens

Sleepyhead

As I lay awake in the white moon light,
I heard a faint singing in the wood,
'Out of bed,
Sleepyhead,
Put your white foot now,
Here are we,
Neath the tree
Singing round the root now!'

I looked out of window, in the white moon light,
The trees were like snow in the wood--
'Come away,
Child, and play
Light with the gnomies;
In a mound,
Green and round,
That's where their home is.
Honey sweet,
Curds to eat,
Cream and frumenty,
Shells and beads,
Poppy seeds,
You shall have plenty.'

But soon as I stooped in the dim moon light
To put on my stocking and my shoes,
The sweet sweet singing died sadly away,
And the light of the morning peeped through:
Then instead of the gnomies there came a red robin
To sing of the buttercups and dew.

- Walter de la Mare

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

- Walter de la Mare

Winter

Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.

The rayless sun,
Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

- Walter de la Mare -- Thanks To Bob Parks For The Suggestion