in that phantasmal light,
    Her current rippled past invisibly.
No stir was in the dark and windless meadows,
Only the water, whispering in the shadows,
    That darkened nature lived did still proclaim.
An hour I stood in that defeat of sight,
    Waiting, and then a sudden silver flame
    Burned in the eastern heaven, and she came.

The Moon, the Summer Moon, surveys the vale:
    The boughs against the dawning sky grow black,
The shades that hid those whispering waters fail,
    And now there falls a gleaming, lengthening track
That lies across the wide and tranquil river,
Burnished and flat, not shaken by a quiver.
    She rises still: the liquid light she spills
Makes everywhere quick sparkles, patches pale;
    And, as she goes, I know her glory fills
    The air of all our English lakes and hills.

High over all this England will she ride;
    She silvers all the roofs of folded towns,
Her brilliance tips the edge of every tide,
    Her shadows make soft caverns in the downs;
Even now, beyond my tree serenely sailing,
She clothes far forests with a gauzy veiling,
    And even as here, where now I stare and dream,
Standing my own transfigured banks beside,
    On many a quiet wandering English stream
    There lies the unshifting image of her beam.

Yes, calm she mounts, and watching her, I know
    By many a river other eyes than mine
Turn up to her; and, as of old, they show
    Their inward hearts all naked to her shine:
Maids, solitaries, sick and happy lovers,
To whom her dear returning orb discovers
    For each the gift he waits for: soft release,
The unsealing of imagination's flow,
    Her own sweet pain, or other pain's surcease,
    The friendly benediction of her peace.

I too am held: as kind she is, as fair,
    As when long since a younger heart drank deep
From that sweet solace, while, through summer air,
    Her lucid fingers hushed the world to sleep.
O as I stand this latest moon beholding,
Her forms unresting memory is moulding;
    Beneath my enchanted eyelids there arise
Visions again of many moons that were,
    Fair, fleeting moons gathered from faded skies,
    Greeted and lost by these corporeal eyes.

Unnumbered are those moons of memory
    Stored in the backward chambers of my brain:
The moons that make bright pathways on the sea,
    The golden harvest moon above the grain;
The moon that all a sleeping village blanches,
The woodland moon that roves beyond the branches,
    Filtering through the meshes of the green
To breast of bird and mossy trunk of tree;
    Moons dimly guessed-at through a cloudy screen,
    The bronze diffusion shed by moons unseen;

Moons that a thin prismatic halo rings,
    Looking a hurrying fleecy heaven through;
The fairy moons of luminous evenings,
    Phantoms of palest pink in palest blue;
Large orange moons on earth's grey verge suspended,
When trees still slumber from the heat that's ended,
    Erect and heavy, and all waters lie
Oily, and there is not a bird that sings.
    All these I know, I have seen them born and die,
    And many another moon in many a sky.

There was a moon that shone above the ground
    Where on a grassy forest height I stood;
Bright was that open place, and all around
    The dense discovered tree-tops of the wood,
Line after line, in misty radiance glistened,
Failing away. I watched the scene and listened;
    Then, awed and hushed, I turned and saw alone,
Protruding from the middle of the mound,
    Fringed with close grass, a moonlit mottled stone,
    Rough-carven, of antiquity unknown.

A night there was, a crowd, a narrow street,
    Torches that reddened faces drunk with dreams,
An orator exultant in defeat,
    Banners, fierce songs, rough cheering, women's screams;
My heart was one with those rebellious people,
Until along a chapel's pointing steeple
    My eyes unwitting wandered to a thin
Crescent, and clouds a swift and ragged sheet;
    And in my spirit's life all human din
    Died, and eternal Silence stood within.

And once, on a far evening, warm and still,
    I leant upon a cool stone parapet.
The quays and houses underneath the hill
    Twinkled with lights; I heard the sea's faint fret;
And then above the eastern cape's long billow
Silent there welled a trembling line of yellow,
    A shred that quickened, then a half that grew
To a full moon, that moved with even will.
    The night was long before her, well she knew,
    And, as she slowly rose into the blue,

She slowly paled, and, glittering far away,
    Flung on the silken waters like a spear,
Her crispèd silver shaft of moonlight lay.
    The lighthouse lamp upon the little pier
Burned wanly by that radiance clear and certain.
Waiting I knew not what uplifted curtain,
    I watched the unmoving world beneath my feet
Till, without warning, miles across the bay,
    Into that silver out of shadows beat,
    Dead black, the whole mysterious fishing-fleet.

These moons I have seen, but these and every one
    Came each so new it seemed to be the first,
New as the buds that open to the sun,
    New as the songs that to the morning burst.
The roses die, each day fresh flowers are springing,
Last year it was another blackbird singing,
    Thou only, marvellous blossom, whose pale flower
Beyond mankind's conjecture hath begun,
    Retain'st for ever an unwithering power
    That stales the loveliest stranger of an hour.

But O, had all my infant nights been dark,
    Or almost dark, lit by the stars alone,
Had never a teller of stories bid me hark
    The promised splendours of that moon unknown:
How perfect then had been the revelation
When first her gradual gold illumination
    Broke on a night upon the conscious child:
My heart had stopped with beauty, seeing her arc
    Climbing the heavens, so far and undefiled,
    So large with light, so even and so mild.

Most wondrous Light, who bring'st this lovelier earth,
    This world of shadows cool with silver fires,
Drawing us higher than our human birth:
    To whom our strange twin-natured kind suspires
Its saddest thoughts, and tenderest and most fragrant
Tears, and desires unnameable and vagrant:
    Watcher, who leanest quietly from above,
Saying all mortal wars are nothing worth:
    Friend of the sorrowful, tranquil as the dove,
    Muse of all poets, lamp of all who love.

Alone and sad, alone and kind and sweet,
    But always peaceful and removed and proud,
Whether with loveliness revealed complete,
    Or veiling from our vision in a cloud:
Our souls' eternal listener, could we wonder
That men who made of sun and storm and thunder
    The awful forms of strong divinity,
Heard in each storm the noise of travelling feet,
    Should, gazing at thy face with hearts made free,
    Have felt a pure, immortal Power in thee?

Selene, Cynthia, and Artemis,
    The swift proud goddess with the silver bow,