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MOON‐STRUCK.
A FANTASY.
- IT is a moor
- Barren and treeless; lying high and bare
- Beneath the archèd sky. The rushing winds
- Fly over it, each with his strong bow bent
- And quiver full of whistling arrows keen.
- I am a woman, lonely, old, and poor.
- If there be any one who watches me
- (But there is none) adown the long blank wold,
- My figure painted on the level sky
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- Would startle him as if it were a ghost,—
- And like a ghost, a weary wandering ghost,
- I roam and roam, and shiver through the dark
- That will not hide me. O but for one hour,
- One blessed hour of warm and dewy night,
- To wrap me like a pall—with not an eye
- In earth or heaven to pierce the black serene.
- Night, call yet this? No night; no dark—no rest—
- A moon‐ray sweeps down sudden from the sky,
- And smites the moor—
- Is’t thou, accursèd Thing,
- Broad, pallid, like a great woe looming out—
- Out of its long‐sealed grave, to fill all earth
- With its dead, ghastly smile? Art there again,
- Round, perfect, large, as when we buried thee,
- I and the kindly clouds that heard my prayers?
- I’ll sit me down and meet thee face to face,
- Mine enemy!—Why didst thou rise upon
- My world—my innocent world, to make me mad?
- Wherefore shine forth, a tiny tremulous curve
- Hung out in the gray sunset beauteously,
- To tempt mine eyes—then nightly to increase
- Slow orbing, till thy full, blank, pitiless stare
- Hunts me across the world?
- No rest—no dark.
- Hour after hour that passionless bright face
- Climbs up the desolate blue. I will press down
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- The lids on my tired eyeballs—crouch in dust,
- And pray.
- —Thank God, thank God!—a cloud has hid
- My torturer. The night at last is free:
- Forth peep in crowds the merry twinkling stars.
- Ah, we’ll shine out, the little silly stars
- And I; we’ll dance together across the moor,
- They up aloft—I here. At last, at last
- We are avengèd of our adversary!
- The freshening of the night air feels like dawn.
- Who said that I was mad? I will arise,
- Throw off my burthen, march across the wold
- Airily—Ha! what, stumbling? Nay, no fear—
- I am used unto the dark, for many a year
- Steering compassionless athwart the waste
- To where, deep hid in valleys of white mist,
- The pleasant home‐lights shine. I will but pause,
- Turn round and gaze—
- O me! O miserable me!
- The cloud‐bank overflows: sudden outpour
- The bright white moon‐rays—ah! I drown, I drown,
- And o’er the flood, with steady motion, slow
- It walketh—my inexorable Doom.
- No more: I shall not struggle any more:
- I will lie down as quiet as a child,—
- I can but die.
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- There, I have hid my face:
- Stray travellers passing o’er the silent wold
- Would only say, “She sleeps.”
- Glare on, my Doom;
- I will not look at thee: and if at times
- I shiver, still I neither weep nor moan:
- Angels may see, I neither weep nor moan.
- Was that sharp whistling wind the morning breeze
- That calls the stars back to the obscure of heaven?
- I am very cold.—And yet there is a change.
- Less fiercely the sharp moonbeams smite my brain,
- My heart beats slower, duller: soothing rest
- Like a soft garment binds my shuddering limbs.—
- If I looked up now, should I see it still
- Gibbeted ghastly in the hopeless sky?—
- No!
- It is very strange: all things seem strange:
- Pale spectral face, I do not fear thee now:
- Was’t this mere shadow which did haunt me once
- Like an avenging fiend?—Well, we fade out
- Together: I’ll nor dread nor curse thee more.
- How calm the earth seems! and I know the moor
- Glistens with dew‐stars. I will try and turn
- My poor face eastward. Close not, eyes! That light
- Fringing the far hills, all so fair—so fair,
- Is it not dawn? I am dying, but ’t is dawn.
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- “Upon the mountains I behold the feet
- Of my Beloved: let us forth to meet”—
- Death.
- This is death. I see the light no more;
- I sleep.
- But like a morning bird my soul
- Springs singing upward, into the deeps of heaven
- Through world on world to follow Infinite Day.
