Moonlight
Lines:32Movement:Romanticism
As a pale phantom with a lampAscends some ruin's haunted stair,So glides the moon along the dampMysterious chambers of the air. Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,As if this phantom, full of pain,Were by the crumbling walls concealed,And at the windows seen again. Until at last, serene and proudIn all the splendor of her light,She walks the terraces of cloud,Supreme as Empress of the Night. I look, but recognize no moreObjects familiar to my view;The very pathway to my doorIs an enchanted avenue. All things are changed. One mass of shade,The elm-trees drop their curtains down;By palace, park, and colonnadeI walk as in a foreign town. The very ground beneath my feetIs clothed with a diviner air;While marble paves the silent streetAnd glimmers in the empty square. Illusion! Underneath there liesThe common life of every day;Only the spirit glorifiesWith its own tints the sober gray. In vain we look, in vain upliftOur eyes to heaven, if we are blind;We see but what we have the giftOf seeing; what we bring we find.