Poems on Various Subjects (Coleridge)/Effusion 18, to the Autumnal Moon

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

EFFUSION XVIII.

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.

MILD Splendor of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watry 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 light;
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 it's flight.