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Hoyt & Roberts, comps.  Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations.  1922.
 
Moon (The)
 
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth.
        Addison—Spectator. No. 465. Ode.		  1
The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven’s tent-hangings fast.
        Wm. R. Alger—Oriental Poetry. The Use of the Moon.		  2
The moon is at her full, and riding high,
  Floods the calm fields with light.
The airs that hover in the summer sky
  Are all asleep to-night.
        Bryant—The Tides.		  3
Doth the moon care for the barking of a dog?
        Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. II. Sec. III. Mem. 7.		  4
The moon pull’d off her veil of light,
That hides her face by day from sight
(Mysterious veil, of brightness made,
That’s both her lustre and her shade),
And in the lantern of the night,
With shining horns hung out her light.
        Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto I. L. 905.		  5
He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no;
That would, as soon as e’er she shone straight,
Whether ’twere day or night demonstrate;
Tell what her d’ameter to an inch is,
And prove that she’s not made of green cheese.
        Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto III. L. 261.		  6
  The devil’s in the moon for mischief; they
Who call’d her chaste, methinks, began too soon
  Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
  Sees half the business in a wicked way,
On which three single hours of moonshine smile—
And then she looks so modest all the while!
        Byron—Don Juan. Canto I. St. 113.		  7
Into the sunset’s turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge;
Enchantment sails through magic seas,
To fairyland Hesperides,
  Over the hills and away.
        Madison Cawein—At Sunset. St. 1.		  8
The sun had sunk and the summer skies
  Were dotted with specks of light
That melted soon in the deep moon-rise
  That flowed over Groton Height.
        M’Donald Clarke—The Graveyard.		  9
The moving moon went up the sky,
  And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
  And a star or two beside.
        Coleridge—The Ancient Mariner. Pt. IV.		  10
When the hollow drum has beat to bed
And the little fifer hangs his head,
When all is mute the Moorish flute,
And nodding guards watch wearily,
  Oh, then let me,
  From prison free,
March out by moonlight cheerily.
        George Colman the Younger—Mountaineers. Act I. Sc. 2.		  11
How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon
From the slow opening curtains of the clouds
Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!
        George Croly—Diana.		  12
And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
        Erasmus Darwin—Botanic Garden. Pt. I. Canto II. L. 90.		  13
Now Cynthia, named fair regent of the night.
        Gay—Trivia. Bk. III.		  14
On the road, the lonely road,
  Under the cold, white moon;
Under the rugged trees he strode,
Whistled and shifted his heavy load—
  Whistled a foolish tune.
        W. W. Harney—The Stab.		  15
He who would see old Hoghton right
Must view it by the pale moonlight.
        Hazlitt—English Proverbs and Provincial Phrases. (1869). P. 196. (Hoghton Tower is not far from Blackburn.)		  16
As the moon’s fair image quaketh
  In the raging waves of ocean,
Whilst she, in the vault of heaven,
  Moves with silent peaceful motion.
        Heine—Book of Songs. New Spring. Prologue. No. 23.		  17
Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go
  Over those hoary crests, divinely led!
Art thou that huntress of the silver bow
  Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread
Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below,
Like the wild chamois from her Alpine snow,
Where hunters never climbed—secure from dread?
        Hood—Ode to the Moon.		  18
The moon, the moon, so silver and cold,
Her fickle temper has oft been told,
Now shady—now bright and sunny—
But of all the lunar things that change,
The one that shows most fickle and strange,
And takes the most eccentric range,
Is the moon—so called—of honey!
        Hood—Miss Kilmansegg. Her Honeymoon.		  19
The stars were glittering in the heaven’s dusk meadows,
Far west, among those flowers of the shadows,
The thin, clear crescent lustrous over her,
Made Ruth raise question, looking through the bars
Of heaven, with eyes half-oped, what God, what comer
Unto the harvest of the eternal summer,
Had flung his golden hook down on the field of stars.
        Victor Hugo—Boaz Asleep.		  20
 
 
Such a slender moon, going up and up,
Waxing so fast from night to night,
And swelling like an orange flower-bud, bright,
Fated, methought, to round as to a golden cup,
And hold to my two lips life’s best of wine.
        Jean Ingelow—Songs of the Night Watches. The First Watch. Pt. II.		  21
  The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.
        Sir William Jones.		  22
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
  Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver car,
  State in wonted manner keep.
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess, excellently bright!
        Ben Jonson—Hymn. To Cynthia.		  23
The moon put forth a little diamond peak
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy cimetar.
        Keats—Endymion. Bk. IV. L. 499.		  24
See yonder fire! It is the moon
Slow rising o’er the eastern hill.
It glimmers on the forest tips,
And through the dewy foliage drips
In little rivulets of light,
And makes the heart in love with night.
        Longfellow—Christus. The Golden Legend. Pt. VI. L. 462.		  25
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests.
        Longfellow—Harvest Moon.		  26
The dews of summer night did fall;
  The moon (sweet regent of the sky)
Silver’d the walls of Cumnor Hall,
  And many an oak that grew thereby.
        Wm. J. Mickle—Cumnor Hall. (Authorship of Cumnor Hall claimed for Jean Adam. Conceded generally to Mickle.)		  27
Let the air strike our tune,
Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.
        Thomas Middleton—The Witch. Act V. Sc. 2.		  28
Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou fair Moon,
That wont’st to love the traveller’s benison,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos.
        Milton—Comus. L. 331.		  29
*  *  *  now glow’d the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveil’d her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.
        Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 604.		  30
    The moon looks
    On many brooks,
The brook can see no moon but this.
        Moore—Irish Melodies. While Gazing on the Moon’s Light.		  31
  He should, as he list, be able to prove the moon made of grene cheese.
        Sir Thomas More—English Works. P. 256. Same phrase in Blackloch—Hatchet of Heresies. (1565). Rabelais. Bk. I. Ch. XI. Jack Jugler in Dodsley’s Old Plays. Ed. by Hazlitt. Vol. II.		  32
            Hail, pallid crescent, hail!
  Let me look on thee where thou sitt’st for aye
  Like memory—ghastly in the glare of day,
But in the evening, light.
        D. M. Mulock—The Moon in the Morning.		  33
                No rest—no dark.
Hour after hour that passionless bright face
Climbs up the desolate blue.
        D. M. Mulock—Moon-Struck.		  34
Au clair de la lune
  Mon ami Pierrot,
Prête moi ta plume
  Pour écrire un mot;
Ma chandelle est morte,
  Je n’ai plus de feu,
Ouvre moi ta porte,
  Pour l’amour de Dieu.
  Lend me thy pen
  To write a word
  In the moonlight,
  Pierrot, my friend!
  My candle’s out,
  I’ve no more fire;—
  For love of God
  Open thy door!
        French Folk Song.		  35
Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi’ the auld moon in hir arme.
        Thomas Percy—Reliques. Sir Patrick Spens. See also Scott—Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.		  36
Jove, thou regent of the skies.
        Pope—Odyssey. Bk. II. L. 42.		  37
Day glimmer’d in the east, and the white Moon
Hung like a vapor in the cloudless sky.
        Samuel Rogers—Italy. The Lake of Geneva.		  38
Again thou reignest in thy golden hall,
Rejoicing in thy sway, fair queen of night!
The ruddy reapers hail thee with delight:
Theirs is the harvest, theirs the joyous call
For tasks well ended ere the season’s fall.
        Roscoe—Sonnet. To the Harvest Moon.		  39
The sun was gone now; the curled moon was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf.
        D. G. Rossetti—The Blessed Damozel. St. 10.		  40
That I could clamber to the frozen moon
And draw the ladder after me.
        Quoted by Schopenhauer in Parerga and Paralipomena.		  41
Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee;
I prithee, dear moon, now show to me
The form and the features, the speech and degree,
Of the man that true lover of mine shall be.
        Scott—Heart of Mid-Lothian. Ch. XVII.		  42
If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.
        Scott—Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto II. St. 1.		  43
The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
That’s curded by the frost from purest snow.
        Coriolanus. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 65.		  44
        How slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
        Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 3.		  45
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And through this distemperature we see
The seasons alter.
        Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 103.		  46
It is the very error of the moon:
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.
        Othello. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 109.		  47
The wat’ry star.
        Winter’s Tale. Act I. Sc. 2.		  48
That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.
        Shelley—The Cloud. IV.		  49
The young moon has fed
  Her exhausted horn
    With the sunset’s fire.
        Shelley—Hellas. Semi-Chorus II.		  50
  Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
  Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever changing, like a joyous eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
        Shelley—To the Moon.		  51
With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
        Sir Philip Sidney—Astrophel and Stella. Sonnet XXXI.		  52
The Moon arose: she shone upon the lake,
Which lay one smooth expanse of silver light;
She shone upon the hills and rocks, and cast
Upon their hollows and their hidden glens
A blacker depth of shade.
        Southey—Madoc. Pt. II. The Close of the Century.		  53
Transcendental moonshine.
        Found in Life of John Sterling. P. 84. (People’s Ed.) Applied to the teaching of Coleridge. Said to have been applied by Carlyle to Emerson.		  54
I with borrow’d silver shine,
What you see is none of mine.
First I show you but a quarter,
Like the bow that guards the Tartar:
Then the half, and then the whole,
Ever dancing round the pole.
        Swift.—On the Moon.		  55
As like the sacred queen of night,
Who pours a lovely, gentle light
Wide o’er the dark, by wanderers blest,
Conducting them to peace and rest.
        Thomson—Ode to Seraphina.		  56
The crimson Moon, uprising from the sea,
With large delight, foretells the harvest near.
        Lord Thurlow—Select Poems. The Harvest Moon.		  57
Meet me by moonlight alone,
  And then I will tell you a tale
Must be told by the moonlight alone,
  In the grove at the end of the vale!
You must promise to come, for I said
  I would show the night-flowers their queen.
Nay, turn not away that sweet head,
  ’T is the loveliest ever was seen.
        J. Augustus Wade—Meet Me by Moonlight.		  58
And suddenly the moon withdraws
  Her sickle from the lightening skies,
  And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
        Oscar Wilde—La Faite de la Lune.		  59
 
 
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