Does anyone know a sonnet which has the moon as its theme, or at least mentions the moon prominently?
Stephen
Stephen, perhaps half a moon is better than none:
Half-Moon Sonnet
Just half the moon has risen in the sky
And dulled the silver gloss on maple leaves.
The stillness and the shadows soon ally
To darken every thought my mind conceives.
This moon that night has bitten half in two
And let the other side fill up with black,
Can't wait until the edge of dawn turns blue
To disappear and then never come back
Though love once held me in its shining grace
I wish that memory would fade like this...
Old moon; that's drawn so thin its sleepless face
Can barely bless the ground with one gray kiss.
That Chill half-hearted light now shines remorse
Into a soul that thought to stay its course.
© Rick Carnes, 1997
Here's another from Bartleby:
Arthur Davison Ficke. 1883–
THERE are strange shadows fostered of the moon,
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day....
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June,
Into the dusk of swooping bats at play;
Or go into that late November dusk
When hills take on the noble lines of death,
And on the air the faint, astringent musk
Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath.
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun,
Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run,
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair;
Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him
Whose homeland lies past each horizon's rim....
Les
There are more here:
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Perhaps the best is this:
A Sonnet of the Moon
by Charles Best
LOOK how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With her full tide is ready her to honor.
But when the silver waggon of the moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.
So you that are the sovereign of my heart
Have all my joys attending on your will;
My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,
When you return their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.
Les
Post Edited (11-05-04 13:51)
Here's another by Walter de la Mare:
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breast peep
Of doves in silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
Shoon, Wally? Tsk. And, with all that, not a single rhyme for silver. Sad, really.
Not exactly a sonnet, but a 14-liner from young Australian poet Andy Kissane. Needs some cricket knowledge to appreciate. It's copyright, but I posted it once before without repercussions. If you like this sample of his poetry, buy his books!
FACING THE MOON
At the end where it’s dead easy to cart trash over square leg,
with only a row of Norfolk pines between us and the road,
just short of a good length, where a googly grips and spins,
she kissed me. She lay on top of me and kissed me,
pushing me into the concrete, driving me into the concrete
as I tongue-kissed the Sea of Tranquility.
Better than cramped tool sheds with the rake at your neck,
better than standing in the gravel in the lane
under the flowering bougainvillea, better than front porches
while parents sit in the car with the engine running.
The smell of damp grass, the Saucepan like a halo,
the sense of place and timing I had then,
kissing my love on the school yard cricket pitch
as the Moon bowled unchanged from the Nursery end.
He tongue-kissed her Sea of Tranquility? Is that near the Mound of Venus? Such language! Shocking, I tell you, shocking.
as long as it's a distance from the the gaseous clouds around Uranus !!