UP in the shining and sun-lighted blue,
Where foam-white clouds sail like a fairy fleet,
The pale moon hovers, glimmering wanly through,
Like a sad chord in chorus gay and sweet.
Frailer than cloud she seems, and torn and frayed;
A little wandering fragment, drifting slow,
Of that brave golden summer moon which made
Midnight so beautiful awhile ago.
Why comes she back at this untimely hour,
When noon is nigh and birds are singing clear,
And the fierce sun, her rival, burns with power?—
What can the poor, the pretty moon want here?
Does she feel lonely in the peopled sky,
The only moon among a starry host;
They all together in brave company,
She wandering solitary as a ghost?
Or does she grieve that we so soon forget
The perfect beauty of her tempered ray,
Drowsily praising her sweet beams, but yet
Keeping our real joyance for the day?
Poor, pallid moon, with a reproachful face
She eyes the humming world as on it moves,
Yearning through the vast intervening space
For some one who remembers her and loves.
And like a homesick spirit, sad at heart,
To heaven’s happy ways not wonted yet,
She seems to murmur when she strays apart:
“I still am faithful; but you all forget.”