Moonlight

“ The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendor of it seemed to transcend human life and human fate. ”

“ As moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it falls, seemed his presence, — as moonlight vanishes, and things assume their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from her eyes — and the outward scene was commonplace once more. ”

“ The moon is dark in herself, like our earth; not like the sun, and those stars which shine by their own glorious light; if she had light of her own, it would be full moon every night; but all that soft brightness which makes everything look so beautiful in the quiet moonlight, really comes from the sun. When the sun has gone down, as it were, into the sea, or has disappeared behind some distant mountain, how do you know that there is any sun? ”

“ Ridiculously enough, though I have not journeyed only in the moonlight, yet I have from my earliest youth forever taken note of the influence of its light, have never in any region missed the light of the full moon and I dream of being, not quite an Endymion, but yet a favorite of the moon. When it returns, its orb little by little growing full, I cannot suppress a feeling of longing while I gaze upon it, whether in meadow and woodland, on the mountains or in the city itself and in my own room. ”

“ Then would come the moonlight to make the world a fairyland of the softest of blue; a mystical land, covered by a velvet sky, studded with sky-diamonds, which seemed very close to the earth, and a moon, like a great ball, stereopticon in its contour and fairly transparent in its soft brilliancy. ”

“ And how useful in this respect is the moon! Volumes might be filled with the poetry of the moon; and yet the theme is ever fresh. The poet and the painter find the subject to be inexhaustible. The aspect of nature in moonlight is so different, that we have, by the gift of the lesser light, virtually two worlds for our abode. The gorgeous sunlit scene gives way, like a dissolving view, to the milder radiance of the moon, and, as by a magic spell, a new scene, with its own characteristic beauty, starts out from nature's canvas. The picturesque effects of moonlight are infinitely varied ”

“ The moon was at the full, and she hung, still tending upwards, high in the transparent vault where all the host of heaven were burning and blinking like tapers in a fitful wind, so brilliant was their scintillating lustre seen through that clear dry atmosphere where the moonlight shows the red and the green of brick wall and painted verandah, colours which are but modulated greys where insular moistness thickens and dims the air. ”

“ The moonlight made a fairy day, that hid all the blemishes, the filth, the ruinous rubbish-heaps, and so beautified the things that were shapely that one might have been walking through a city of the silver sky. ”

“ Through the curtains gleaming, Moonlight comes a’ beaming; Hush! My Baby, we’re found. Deep in the night the old moon sees you dreaming, Sleeping while the world spins round. Bright kind old face, like a sentinel seeming, Smiling while the world spins round. ”

“ The moon is in our minds associated with peace, silence, rest; the silver radiance causes no pain to the eyes, and like charity, while revealing objects, it adds to their beauty, and subdues defects. Much that by the light of day seems harsh and ugly appears picturesque and fascinating in the delicate splendor of the moonlight. ”

“ The moon shines far brighter than at other times, as if a lamp were burning at its full height in the sleeping-room instead of a mere night-light. People strolling along, absorbed in thought and feeling the flagstones under their feet still warm--for they have been drinking in the fierce glow of the sun the livelong summer day--catch themselves in the act of crossing over out of the moonlight to the shady side, just as one does in the hot noontide. ”

“ Moon shining strangely on the white palings of the fence, I am shining too but my light is shut inside of me and can't get out.
: :
Old house with black windows— blind house begging moonlight to put out the shadows— why do you want so much light? You creak when the wind steps on you— you cough up dust and your beams ache— you know you will soon fall, the moon just pities you! Don't waste yourself moon— come on my bed and play with me. Wrap me up in blue light, you who are cool. I am too hot, I am all alive and the shadows are outside of me. ”

“ The moonbeams trail their shrouds;
Their tattered cerements
Cling to the gauzy clouds,
In ribbons frayed and thin—
And startled by the light
Silence shrinks deeper in
The depths of night.
Useless lie spades and rakes;
Rust's on the garden-tools.
Yet, where the moonlight makes
Nebulous silver pools
A ghostly shape is cast—
Something unseen has stirred.... ”

“ GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear soul desires thee. ”

“ The effect of the moonlight, as it falls on the edges of the adjoining mountains, is very impressive,—-its brightness in this country being intense: a hard, lustrous outline encircles the moon; and the spots and streaks upon it which resemble lakes and mountains, actually pain the eyes from the luminous glare of light which surrounds them. ”

“ When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper. ”

“ On the fine moonlight nights, too, there might often be seen a group sitting there, and enjoying what is to them a solemn hour, for they entertain the poetic belief that "the moon was made to give light to the dead." ”

“ Then, there is poetry in reposing under the direct gaze of the moon and stars, which, like guardian angels, superintend, while the watchful sentinel guards around. Apropos: we do have some of the finest nights you ever witnessed. The moonlight is so clear and bright, we easily see to read by it. ”

“ But draws not in the air.
And I know, what time the moonlight
On her nest of shadows will sit,
Out on the dim lawn gliding
That shadowy shadow will flit.
V. The moon is dreaming upward
From a sea of cloud and gleam ”

“ In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going. ”

“ It is easy to understand how the first rough observations of moonlight and its changes taught men the true nature of the moon, as an opaque globe circling round the earth, and borrowing her light from the sun. They perceived, first, that the moon was only full when she was opposite the sun, shining at her highest in the [127] south at midnight when the sun was at his lowest beneath the northern horizon. ”

“ The Moon has been credited with many other influences upon us, malign as well as benevolent. Our words lunacy and lunatic preserve the idea once universally held that moonlight can affect the minds of men; countless wise sayings embalm the belief that the Moon affects the weather; and others, the belief that the planting of various crops, to result in fruitful harvests, must be timed to the right phase of the Moon. ”

“ I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. ”

“ The moonlight rolls down like a river,
The silence streams out like a sea;
And far where the eastern winds quiver,
My farewell goes floating to thee. ”

“ But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to us, but also by her influence on the earth and its inhabitants. "The moon gravitates toward the earth, and the earth reciprocally toward the moon." The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence. I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts from the current distractions of the day. ”

“ When we can explain the nature of this force adherent to moonlight, and to no other light, we may inquire why, in all ages and in all lands, the verdict of experience points to moonlight as a factor in the production and aggravation of lunacy. An empirical hypothesis, of course; but in the better sense, as well as in the worse. For the perturbing influence of moonlight, if it be a myth, is about the most tenacious one on earth. ”

“ The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light. ”

“ Rolling up the back drop the change is made slowly and carefully until the moon is discovered in the night half of the sky and goes up with it, while the usual moonlight mediums are brought into requisition to increase the brightness of the view. ”

“ This method of reckoning time from the revolutions and phases of light of the moon has been long practiced in those countries in which the constant clearness of the heavens enables people to determine with considerable accuracy the first appearance of the moonlight, the so-called "new light," and, again, among those whose limited intercourse with other nations afforded no comparison of fixed standards. ”

“ I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way! ”

“ Was every one followed in the moonlight? ”

“ Silence smothered us absolutely—the silence of night, of listening, the silence of a haunted expectancy. The very gurgling of the lamps was too soft to be heard, and if light itself had sound, I do not think we should have noticed the silvery tread of the moonlight as it entered the high narrow windows and threw upon the floor the slender traces of its pallid footsteps.
Colonel Wragge and the doctor, and myself too for that matter, sat thus like figures of stone, without speech and without gesture. ”

“ When hath the fallen fiend his power?
On through the black-pine forest she pass'd:
Drearily moan'd around her the blast;
Hot and heavy the thick boughs grew,
Till even with pain her breath she drew;
Flicker'd the moonlight over her path,
As the clouds had gather'd together in wrath,
Like the vague hopes whose false lures give birth
To one half the miseries haunting our earth. ”

“ Nothing out of dreams is more peacefully enchanting than the embowered stretches of clear water rippled into silver arabesque through a long moonlight night, or the hazy vistas, impurpled by twilight, into which one swings around the short curves of the Sacramento, amid a silence that would be absolute but for his own motion, while beyond either woody margin the great plains spread away untenanted, a waving wilderness of wild grass and tulé. ”

“ One of the principal elements in human happiness is the realization of beauty in nature, whether it be in the exquisite form and color of the petal of a rose, the glowing green of the beetle's armor, the flight of the swallow, the moonlight serenade of the mocking bird, the iridescent green and bronze ocelli of the peacock's tail-coverts, the mountains veiled in opalescent mists, the abysmal blue of the ocean, the glory of red and gold in the sunset, or the shimmer of the myriad stars. ”

“ Now that they see it no more, they have passionate memories of their beloved bay, seen through a frame of rustling leaves from that lofty platform—how it looked in the dawn and sunrise, in the intensely blue noon, in the moonlight nights, and when gales and tempests were abroad, and how it sounded in the hushed darkness when they woke out of their sleep to listen to it—the rhythmic fall of breaking waves on the rocks below, the tremulous boom that filled the air and seemed to shake the foundations of the solid earth. ”

“ From morning to night he wandered in the Forest; often he went out after dinner; his mind was charged with trees—their foliage, growth, development; their wonder, beauty, strength; their loneliness in isolation, their power in a herded mass. He knew the effect of every wind upon them; the danger from the boisterous north, the glory from the west, the eastern dryness, and the soft, moist tenderness that a south wind left upon their thinning boughs. He spoke all day of their sensations: how they drank the fading sunshine, dreamed in the moonlight, thrilled to the kiss of stars. ”

“ I start at my own shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings. God knows that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place! I looked out over the beautiful expanse, bathed in soft yellow moonlight till it was almost as light as day. In the soft light the distant hills became melted, and the shadows in the valleys and gorges of velvety blackness. The mere beauty seemed to cheer me; there was peace and comfort in every breath I drew. ”

“ But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. ”

“ Idles the night wind through the dreaming firs,
That waking murmur low,
As some lost melody returning stirs
The love of long ago;
And through the far, cool distance, zephyr fanned.
The moon is sinking into shadow-land. ”

“ I try to think in vain, to whom or how Beneath the moon there's nothing of the kind.— I'll show she's like the moon, I vow! The moon—she rouges, steals the sun's bright light, By eating stolen bread her living gets,— Is also wont to paint her cheeks at night, While, with untiring ardor, she coquets. The moon—for this may Herod give her thanks!— Reserves her best till night may have returned; Our lady swallows up by day the francs That she at night-time may have earned. ”