I wasn't sure what the Law of Moons is, but I did like the idea of discussing the moon in poetry. This is one of my favorite poems. It is spoken in the voice of a child, which makes it all the more sinister and strange. (Who, for instance, is she?) Anyway, the poem certainly strikes me as an unusual and unsentimental use of the moon:

I Hate the Moon

I hate the moon, though it makes most people glad,
And they giggle and talk of silvery beams—you know!
But she says the look of the moon drives people mad,
And that’s the thing that always frightens me so.

I hate it worst when it’s cruel and round and bright
And you can’t make out the marks on it’s stupid face,
Except when you shut your eyelashes and all night
The sky looks green and the world’s a horrible place.

I like the stars, and especially the Big Bear
And the W star, and one like a diamond ring,
But I hate the moon and its horrible stony stare,
And I know one day it’ll do me some dreadful thing.


--Robert Graves

As an aside: Graves did have a horror of moonlight, to do with a wartime experience--a mission into no-man's land during the full moon, which was tantamount to a suicide mission.

Another by Graves:

The Cruel Moon

The cruel Moon hangs out of reach
Up above the shadowy beech.
Her face is stupid, but her eye
Is small and sharp and very sly.
Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?
No, that’s a silly story, lad!
Though she be angry, though she would
Destroy all England if she could,
Yet think, what damage can she do
Hanging there so far from you?
Don’t heed what frightened nurses say:
Moons hang much too far away.

Blood and the Moon
W.B. Yeats

I

Bleesed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages -
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.

II

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind,

And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;

And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme;

Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual fire.

III

The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its arrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.

IV

Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.


[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited December 07, 2004).]

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things--
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
...the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

--E. E. Cummings (1923)




[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited December 07, 2004).]

I'll offer Federico Garcia Lorca. I think this is the Koch translation.


THE MOON RISES

When the moon comes up
the bells are lost
and there appear
impenetrable paths.

When the moon comes up
the sea blankets the earth
and the heart feels
like an island in infinity.

No one eats oranges
under the full moon.
One must eat
cold green fruit.

When the moon comes up
with a hundred equal faces,
silver money
sobs in the pocket.

LA LUNA ASOMA

Cuando sale la luna
se pierden las campanas
y aparecen las sendas
impenetrables.

Cuando sale la luna,
el mar cubre la tierra
y el corazon se siente
isla en eo infinito.

Nadie come naranjas
bajo la luna llena.
Es preciso comer
fruta verde y helada.

Cuando sale la luna,
de cien rostros iguales,
la moneda de plata
solloza en el bolsillo.

Sylvia's work is studded with nasty moons.

Moonrise - 1958

Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
I'll go out and sit in white like they do,
Doing nothing. July's juice rounds their nubs.

This park is fleshed with idiot petals.
White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
Cast a round white shadow in their dying.

A pigeon rudders down. It's fantail's white
Vocation enough: opening, shutting
White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.

Enough for fingernails to make half-moons
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
White bruises toward color, else collapses.

Berries redden. A body of whiteness
Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
Though the body walk out in clean linen.

I smell that whiteness here, beneath the stones
Where small ants roll their eggs, where grubs fatten.
Death may whiten in sun or out of it.

Death whitens in the egg and out of it.
I can see no color for this whiteness.
White: it is a complexion of the mind.

I tire, imagining white Niagaras
Build up from a rock root, as fountains build
Against the weighty image of their fall.

Lucina, bony mother, laboring
Among the socketed white stars, your face
Of candor pares white flesh to the white bone,

Who drag our ancient father at the heel,
White-bearded, weary. The berries purple
And bleed. The white stomach may ripen yet.

- Sylvia Plath

Wow! Hard to follow THAT! However, here's Ted.

The Harvest Moon
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The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.

Also strange and similarly in a colour scheme; though what a different atmosphere.

A moon image I always recall when moons are discussed, is this from Donne's The First Anniversarie. An Anatomy of the World, of 1611.

But keepes the earth her round proportion still?
Doth not a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sink?

(ll. 285-88).

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited December 08, 2004).]

From Pope's translation of the Iliad, at the end of book VIII.

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's pure azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head:
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays.

Tennyson translates as follows:

As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy.

I should give Lattimore, too, for comparison's sake, but he's not at hand right now. I would also give the Greek, except that those who can read it will have their own text, & transliteration is so unsightly.

I wanted also to post a Wordsworth blank verse fragment which I think is in conversation with the Pope, i.e., correcting it, though not with specific reference to Homer--that is, he thought that Pope's description (because it is Pope's far more than Homer's) was more stylized than accurate, with the planets "rolling" and the stars "gilding," and somehow the "flood of glory bursts" when there are no clouds, etc.--but I don't remember enough about it to google it, & I'm not certain I would find it if I did. Does anyone else have any idea what I'm talking about?

Well, here's some unsightly transliteration, pseudo-Sappho:

deduke men a selanna
kai Pleiades, mesai de
nuktes, para d'erchet'ora
ego de mona kateudo.

The moon and Pleiades
have sunk into the seas;
the night is getting on,
and time goes by
dragging, while I
lie here alone.

(Apologies for the ten-minute hack-job translation, maybe someone knows a real one.)

Chris

Edit: Here's a translation of the not-Sappho by J. Easby-Smith, which unfortunately adds too much (in particular, "my hopes are flown" and "alas") & makes it less interesting, though it rhymes well.

The moon has set
In a bank of jet
That fringes the Western sky,
The pleiads seven
Have sunk from heaven
And the midnight hurries by;
My hopes are flown
And, alas! alone
On my weary couch I lie.


[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited December 09, 2004).]

Housman has two gorgeous poems (two of my favorites) based on that fragment. Only one keeps the moon in it, tho:

from <u>More Poems</u>

X

The weeping Pleiads wester,
And the moon is under seas;
From bourn to bourn of midnight
Far sighs the rainy breeze:

It sighs from a lost country
To a land I have not known;
The weeping Pleiads wester,
And I lie down alone.


XI

The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.

The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.

Mark, as always, isn't Donne amazing. It's such an image. He was a remarkable man.

Ahh, Alicia, thanks for those. Much better than translations.

BANNED POST Sir Philip Sidney. (1554-86)
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Sonnet XXXIBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST(From BANNED POSTAstrophel and Stella)BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST


With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks;BANNED POSTBANNED POSTthy languisht grace
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThose lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTDo they call virtue there, ungratefulness? BANNED POST

Here's Philip Larkin's moon poem, which takes its name from that beauty by Sir Philip Sidney that Mark has posted above. Apart from this being a wonderful poem in its own right, it is interesting in that Larkin always demurred at the idea of poems referring in any way to other poems or poets which he characterised as being like "showing everyone you know the right people." He certainly can be forgiven this one.

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moons cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous,a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate --
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminshed somewhere.

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

Elizabeth Bishop

Thanks to Alicia for pointing out how this poem belongs here (silly me).

REASONS
by Thomas James


For our own private reasons
We live in each other for an hour.
Stranger, I take your body and its seasons,
Aware the moon has gone a little sour

For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone
Shaken out of its proper setting.
We lie down in each other. We lie down alone
And watch the moon's flawed marble getting

Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight?
The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black,
Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight.
Even this moon could never pull them back,

Even if it held them in its arms
And weighed them down with stones,
Took them entirely on their own terms
And piled the orchard's blossom on their bones.

I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.

Readers of moons, please excuse this brief aside.

Ha!

Thank you, Oliver, for posting that comment from Larkin, only a true English snob could ever say such a thing. As if referring to another poet or poem alone demonstrates that "you know the right people." Any poet who doesn't know these rightly famous "right people" should not bother writing at all. If all of our poems are not dialogues with all the great poems of the past, and we only seek the truly "new" and "innovative", we are in serious trouble. Every line we write should reflect our familiarity with our great tradition. Those who don't drop the names of Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, etc ... in every line they write are probably only writing specious twaddle. I would prefer an attitude of simple honesty about our massive debt to "the right people."

------------------
Mark Allinson

http://markallinson.netpublish.net/

Ben Jonson

Hymn To Diana

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair
seaState in wonted manner keep;
seastaHesperus entreats thy light,
seastaGoddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia`s shining orb was made
sea Heaven to clear when day did close:
seastaBless us then with wished sight,
seastaGoddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart
And thy crystal - shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
sea Space to breathe, how short soever:
seastaThou that mak`st a day of night,
seastaGoddess excellently bright!

Mark,

There's a difference between having absorbed the writing of "the right people" so thoroughly that one cannot help engaging them in every line, & pretentiously "dropping their names." The former is what a serious writer does; the latter is a kind of needy flag-waving, "Hey, look at me, look how earnest & learned I am!" Neither Frost nor Larkin made a point of showing off their learning, but they knew what they were doing & the context in which they were doing it.

Chris

Chris, you are so right.

This insidious practice of name-dropping nearly ruined the Renaissance, with all those poems "after" all the great classical poems and poets, naming-dropping Ovid and Virgil and Homer every other line. Poor needy show offs.

And when Keats just had to boast that he had read George Chapman (ooh, big deal, John, so what you read Chapman - who cares), well that was it for me.

------------------
Mark Allinson

http://markallinson.netpublish.net/

That's the poem where he fucks up trying to namedrop Balboa and puts in Cortez instead, right?



------------------
Steve Schroeder

That's right, Steve! The silly young name-dropper couldn't even drop the right one. So the joke was really on him. Serves him right for trying to show off his learning like that.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

------------------
Mark Allinson

http://markallinson.netpublish.net/

Poor John Keats, needy little showoff... and to think that even though he got it wrong people are still name-dropping HIM! Only because it's one of the most wonderful sonnets in our already rich canon.

I've always loved that about him, anyway, that he was so ambitious, so desperate to be famous. He had no idea.

Look, one thing that's critically missing in all this sarcasm is an understanding that the poetic culture of today is not what it was two hundred years ago. Poetry has a much diminished position, in case no one noticed, & has been largely replaced for society at large by television, movies, video games, etc.. Thus, self-importance is all the more to be avoided, as having no basis in reality--unlike, say, in Pindar's day.

Chris

To clarify, I agree at least in part with Chris, and I think Keats was an overrated showoff who wrote a lot of florid crap.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

yes, I do think that the Larkin has to be taken in context, and with a grain of salt. He was writing against a backdrop of folks like TS Eliot, who not only name-drop but foot note, and who in comparison can seem pretentious.

It seems to me, looking through a lot of recent journals, we've returned to a lot of this sort of thing. Poets eager to show off obscure reading--name-dropping of people and ideas instead of making poems. The endless epigraphs, for instance, to poems and books of poems that are less about elucidating the poetry and more about saying, hey, look what I'm reading! You know what I mean...

By the way, Oliver, I'm not sure I had consciously made the connection between the Larkin poem and the famous Sidney sonnet before you put the two poems together! Also reminds me that maybe you--or someone else on these boards--first pointed out to me the connection between "This Be the Verse" and Stevensen's Requiem. Anyway, thanks!

Yes thanks! I am lost as to why anyone would want to copy the masters or drop their names casually without so much as a wink to the director.

But then again, I prefer it when published poets choose not to hijack ideas from other poets either! Living or dead ones, greek or otherwise. You can see that in guitar riffs in most popular music nowdays....Bob Dylan used in Snoop Doggy Dog and beyond. Oh bother!

Or could we say that borrowing is the same as plagiarizing?

Can one plagiarize oneself? Can one plagiarize the Moon?
Guess not.

I think that poets who chose to ignore the fact that they have completely unoriginal ideas and instead, make a "bow" to Hamlet or a "wink" to Shopenhauer, then....they are simply choosing to make an inside joke amongst cruel elitism..oppressive!

But this about the moon so I don't know any moon poems to speak of. Just enjoying the brilliancy of this topic here.

Alicia said:
Also reminds me that maybe you--or someone else on these boards--first pointed out to me the connection between "This Be the Verse" and Stevenson's Requiem.


Good grief! Why didn't I realise that before ?
Thanks for that,
Janet


REQUIEM

by: Robert Louis Stevenson


UNDER the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
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This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.












[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited December 12, 2004).]

The Critic and the Moon

"How do I truly feel
about the moon? Too large?
Too small? Too dim? Too bright?"

"Hanging in the sky like a kite,
the poor thing craves attention,
yet it is a mere bijou of the night.
It is able to show us just one face,
and hides its back side as if in fear
— but I don’t hesitate to show my rear."

Christopher T. George


[This message has been edited by ChrisGeorge (edited December 13, 2004).]

Chris my moon poem is in this site:
Susquehanna Quarterly

Janet

And where would we be without:

When the moon is upside doon,
The fishes swim from Ayr to Troon.
But when the moon is fresh and fair,
The fishes swim from Troon to Ayr.

William Topaz McGonagall

and, by the same hand,

The Moon

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou seemest most charming to my sight;
As I gaze upon thee in the sky so high,
A tear of joy does moisten mine eye.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the Esquimau in the night;
For thou lettest him see to harpoon the fish,
And with them he makes a dainty dish.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the fox in the night,
And lettest him see to steal the grey goose away
Out of the farm-yard from a stack of hay.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the farmer in the night,
and makes his heart beat high with delight
As he views his crops by the light in the night.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the eagle in the night,
And lettest him see to devour his prey
And carry it to his nest away.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the mariner in the night
As he paces the deck alone,
Thinking of his dear friends at home.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the weary traveller in the night;
For thou lightest up the wayside around
To him when he is homeward bound.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the lovers in the night
As they walk through the shady groves alone,
Making love to each other before they go home.

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the poacher in the night;
For thou lettest him see to set his snares
To catch the rabbit and the hares.

John

Few poets have afforded me as much pleasure as has William Topaz McGonagall;)

Actually the little poem is rather neat. Monkeys and typewriters or the spark showing?

Thank you John.
Janet

I quite like the short poem too! It would be very nice in a collection of nursery rhymes or children's poems.

I think the famous Byron poem must be included here:

So We'll Go no More a Roving


So we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

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.


The University of Toronto library website has some very good poetry resources. It includes this note on the poem:

Included in a letter written from Venice to Thomas Moore on February 28, 1817, and first published by Moore in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (1830). In the letter, the poem is preceded by an account of its Lenten occasion. "At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival--that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights--had knocked me up a little. But it is over--and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music.... Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find "the sword wearing out the scabbard," though I have but just turned the corner of twenty nine." The poem seems to have been suggested in part by the refrain of a Scottish song known as The Jolly Beggar.

Good to remember too that Byron's first stanza is by Anonymous!

An old English verse:

Pale moon doth rain,
Red moon doth blow,
White moon doth neither
Rain nor snow.

One of my Ronsard translations:

Good Moon

Good Moon, hide your horns tonight:
Endymion upon your breast
Would sleep, not stirring from his rest,
And no magician give you flight.

Night means action, day but dread,
As nearby spies move in on prey.
Intrepid under night’s cachet,
I stalk the shadows Moon has shed.

Good Moon, well you know love’s dart,
When Pan lets fly, will stick your heart,
And drive you mad with poison tip
As deadly as his hidden fire.
None evades his marksmanship,
And all are locked in love’s desire.

Terese


[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited December 14, 2004).]

I've enjoyed so many of these poems, but have discovered all over again that I prefer when the moon takes me by surprise. As it is in life, so is it in poetry. A thread devoted to the moon was a good idea, but I've had to take these poems in slowly.

I offer Baudelaire, translated by Michael Hamburger.

The Favors of the Moon

The moon, who is caprice itself, looked throught the window while you were sleeping in your cradle, and said to herself: 'I like this child.'

And softly she descended her staircase of clouds and, noiselessly, passed through the window-panes. Then she stretched herself out over you with the supple tenderness of a mother, and laid down her colors on your face. Ever since, the pupils of your eyes have remained green and your cheeks unusually pale. It was while contemplating this visitor that your eyes became so strangely enlarged; and she clasped your neck so tenderly that you have retained for ever the desire to weep.

However, in the expansion of her joy, the Moon filled the whole room like a phosphorescent vapor, like a luminous poison; and all the living light thought and said: 'You shall suffer for ever the influence of my kiss. You shall be beautiful in my fashion. You shall love that which I love and that which loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the immense green sea; the formless and multiform streams; the place where you shall not be; the lover whom you shall not know; flowers of monstrous shape; perfumes that cause delerium; cats that shudder, swoon and curl up on pianos and groan like women, with a voice that is hoarse and gentle.

'And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You shall be the queen of all men that have green eyes, whose necks also I have clasped in my nocturnal caresses; of those who love the sea, the sea that is immense, tumultuous and green, the formless and multiform streams, the place where they are not, the woman whom they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble the censers of a strange religion, perfumes that confound the will; and the savage and voluptuous animals which are the emblems of their dementia.'

And that, my dear, cursed, spoiled child, is why I am now lying at your feet, seeking in all your person the reflection of the formidable divinity, of the foreknowing godmother, the poisoning wet-nurse of the lunatics.

Ah, yes, the lover and lunacy. Plenty of moonlight in "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

The Highwayman
By Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

PART ONE

I

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shuters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

V

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.



PART TWO

I

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

II

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .

VI

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

VII

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * *

X

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.




P.S. Canadian folk singer Loreena McKennitt has a great version of Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" as a ballad on her CD "The Book of Secrets." It is also on her live CD "Live in Paris/Toronto." See http://www.quinlanroad.com/homepage/...?LangType=1033



[This message has been edited by ChrisGeorge (edited December 14, 2004).]

Oh that is so fabulous. God. I hadn't read it since I was a kid! Hair like mouldy hay!

The Winter It Is Past

The winter it is past,
And the summer's come at last,
And the small birds sing on ev'ry tree;
The hearts of these are glad,
While I am very sad,
Since my true love is parted from me.

The rose upon the breer,
By the waters running clear,
May have charms for the linnet or the bee;
Their little loves are blest
And their little hearts at rest,
But my true love is parted from me.

My love is like the sun,
In the firmament does run,
For ever constant and true;
But his is like the moon
That wanders up and down,
And every month it is new.

All you that are in love
And cannot it remove,
I pity the pains you endure:
For experience makes me know
That your hearts are full of woe,
A woe no mortal can cure.

Robert Burns

http://www.donshewey.com/1999_zine/cliche.html

Proust and the Moon. Clever. I don't know if it is related but since I'm trying to read the darn encyclopeadia (been trying for two years now) of Proust, I came across this article and thought it would be interesting to post it here.