Even the tender feeling we bestow on it is mingled with compassion; we pity it like an old maid, for we vaguely feel, the poets notwithstanding, that it is not a corpse but a cold virgin. Planets, like woman, need a husband, and the poor moon, disdained by the sun, is nothing more nor less than an old maid, as we mortals say. And it is for this reason that, with its timid light, it fills us with hopes that cannot be realized, and desires that cannot be fulfilled. All that we vainly and dimly wait and hope for upon this earth, works in our hearts like mysterious but powerless sap, beneath the pale rays of the moon. When we raise our eyes to it, we quiver with inexpressible tenderness and are thrilled by impossible dreams! [Illustration 032] The narrow crescent, a mere thread of gold, now dipped its keen gleaming point in the water, and gradually plunged gently and slowly till the other point, so delicate that I could not detect the moment of its vanishing, had also disappeared. Then, I raised my eyes towards the inn. The lighted window was closed. A dull melancholy crushed my heart, and I went below. [1] Then it was the fair age of balminess and breezes. The moon became peopled with living whispers; She had bottomless seas and numberless rivers, Flocks, cities, tears, and cries full of joy, She had love; she had her arts, her laws, her gods, Then slowly sank back into darkness. [2] 'Twas in the dusky night, Above the yellowed steeple, Stood the moon Like a dot on an I. By what sombre spirit Is thy face or profile, Swung as from a thread Through the shadows of the sky? [3] Alone above the seas, the wandering moon Lets fall her silver tears in the black billows. [4] "With a lily in each hand she came, The slanting beam her pathway. [5] Alone the pale moon parting the clouds Like a gloomy lamp, sadly oscillates Dumb world, marked by a sign of anger, Fragment of a dead globe dispersed at haphazard, She let fall from her frozen orb A sepulchral reflection on a polar ocean. [6] And, to take her place, one awakens A ray of moonlight asleep on the bench. [7] And Ruth, motionless, Asked herself, as she opened her half-closed eye under her veil, What God, what reaper of the eternal summer, Had negligently thrown as he passed by This golden sickle in the starry field. [8]