Saturday, November 1, 2014

To the Autumnal Moon / Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Effusion XVIII.
To the Autumnal moon

Mild Splendour of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy weak eye glimmers thro' a fleecy veil;
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gather’d blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o’er th' awaken’d sky.

Ah such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing’d Despair:
But soon emerging in her radiant might
She o’er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

~~
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
from Poems on Various Subjects,  1796

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge biography

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