ain
Castest far away.
Thou dost o'er my fields extend
Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching, like a gentle friend,
O'er my destiny."

Browning felt the charm of a lambent moon:

"Voluptuous transport rises with the corn
Beneath a warm moon like a happy face."

So with an English picture from Kirke White:

"Moon of harvest, herald mild
Of plenty, rustic labour's child,
Hail! O hail! I greet thy beam,
As soft it trembles o'er the stream,
And gilds the straw-thatched hamlet wide,
Where Innocence and Peace reside;
'Tis thou that gladd'st with joy the rustic throng,
Promptest the tripping dance, th' exhilarating song."

To emphasise this aspect is not to forget that there is another.
Wordsworth experienced both types of emotion. Time, he sings:

"that frowns
In her destructive flight on earthly crowns,
Spares thy cold splendour; still those far-shot beams
Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams
With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise
Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays."

But abundant evidence is available to prove that the position
taken by Goethe and Schopenhauer may easily lead to a loss of
true perspective. The moon and stars, though remote, are also
near: though they start trains of passive and contemplative
thought, they also stimulate active emotions and even
passionate yearnings. What more passionate than Shelley?

"The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow."

There do not seem to be many poets who have brought into
clear antithesis and relief this dual aspect of the mystic
influence of the heavenly bodies. But it definitely arrested the
imagination and thought of Clough, whose poem, "Selene,"
deals wholly with this theme. It is too long for quotation here,
though the whole of it would be admirably in place. Enough is
given to show its general drift. The Earth addresses the Moon:

"My beloved, is it nothing
Though we meet not, neither can,
That I see thee, and thou me,
That we see and see we see,
When I see I also feel thee;
Is it nothing, my beloved?
. . .
O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not,
Lookest onward, look'st before,
Yet I follow evermore.
Cruel, cruel, didst thou only
F