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Home  »  Specimens of American Poetry  »  Lydia H. Sigourney (1791–1865)

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By To the Moon

Lydia H. Sigourney (1791–1865)

HAIL beauteous and inconstant!—Thou who roll’st

Thy silver car around the realm of night,

Queen of soft hours! how fanciful art thou

In equipage and vesture.—Now thou com’st

With slender horn piercing the western cloud,

As erst on Judah’s hills, when joyous throngs

With trump and festival saluted thee;

Anon thy waxing crescent ’mid the host

Of constellations, like some fairy boat,

Glides o’er the waveless sea; then as a bride

Thou bow’st thy cheek behind a fleecy veil,

Timid and fair; or, bright in regal robes,

Dost bid thy full orb’d chariot proudly roll,

Sweeping with silent rein the starry path

Up to the highest node,—then plunging low

To seek dim Nadir in his misty cell.—

—Lov’st thou our earth, that thou dost hold thy lamp

To guide and cheer her, when the wearied sun

Forsakes her?—Sometimes, roving on, thou shedd’st

The eclipsing blot ungrateful, on that sire

Who feeds thy urn with light,—but sinking deep

’Neath the dark shadow of the earth dost mourn

And find thy retribution.

—Dost thou hold

Dalliance with ocean, that his mighty heart

Tosses at thine approach, and his mad tides,

Drinking thy favoring glance, more rudely lash

Their rocky bulwark?—Do thy children trace

Through crystal tube our coarser-featured orb

Even as we gaze on thee?—With Euclid’s art

Perchance, from pole to pole, her sphere they span,

Her sun-loved tropics—and her spreading seas

Rich with their myriad isles. Perchance they mark

Where India’s cliffs the trembling cloud invade,

Or Andes with his fiery banner flouts

The empyrean,—where old Atlas towers,—

Or that rough chain whence he of Carthage pour’d

Terrors on Rome.—Thou, too, perchance, hast nursed

Some bold Copernicus, or fondly call’d

A Galileo forth, those sun-like souls

Which shone in darkness, though our darkness fail’d

To comprehend them.—Canst thou boast, like earth,

A Kepler, skilful pioneer and wise?—

A sage to write his name among the stars

Like glorious Herschel?—or a dynasty

Like great Cassini’s, which from sire to son

Transmitted science as a birthright seal’d?

—Rose there some lunar Horrox,—to whose glance

Resplendent Venus her adventurous course

Reveal’d, even in his boyhood?—some La Place

Luminous as the skies he sought to read?—

Thou deign’st no answer,—or I fain would ask

If since thy bright creation, thou hast seen

Ought like a Newton, whose admitted eye

The arcana of the universe explored?

Light’s subtle ray its mechanism disclosed,

The impetuous comet his mysterious lore

Unfolded,—system after system rose,

Eternal wheeling through the immense of space,

And taught him of their laws.—Even angels stood

Amazed, as when in ancient times they saw

On Sinai’s top, a mortal walk with God.—

—But he to whom the secrets of the skies

Were whisper’d—in humility adored,

Breathing with childlike reverence the prayer,

—“When on yon heavens, with all their orbs, I gaze,

Jehovah!—what is man?”