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| THAT silent moon, that silent moon, | |
| Carcering now through cloudless sky, | |
| Oh! who shall tell what varied scenes | |
| Have pass’d beneath her placid eye, | |
| Since first, to light this wayward earth, | 5 |
| She walk’d in tranquil beauty forth. | |
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| How oft has guilt’s unhallow’d hand, | |
| And superstition’s senseless rite, | |
| And loud, licentious revelry, | |
| Profaned her pure and holy light: | 10 |
| Small sympathy is hers, I ween, | |
| With sights like these, that virgin queen. | |
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| But dear to her, in summer eve, | |
| By rippling wave, or tufted grove, | |
| When hand in hand is purely clasp’d, | 15 |
| And heart meets heart in holy love, | |
| To smile, in quiet loneliness, | |
| And hear each whisper’d vow and bless. | |
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| Dispersed along the world’s wide way, | |
| When friends are far, and fond ones rove, | 20 |
| How powerful she to wake the thought, | |
| And start the tear for those we love! | |
| Who watch, with us, at night’s pale noon, | |
| And gaze upon that silent moon. | |
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| How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn, | 25 |
| The magic of that moonlight sky, | |
| To bring again the vanish’d scenes, | |
| The happy eves of days gone by; | |
| Again to bring, ’mid bursting tears, | |
| The loved, the lost of other years. | 30 |
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| And oft she looks, that silent moon, | |
| On lonely eyes that wake to weep, | |
| In dungeon dark, or sacred cell, | |
| Or couch, whence pain has banish’d sleep: | |
| Oh! softly beams that gentle eye, | 35 |
| On those who mourn, and those who die. | |
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| But beam on whomsoe’er she will, | |
| And fall where’er her splendor may, | |
| There ’s pureness in her chasten’d light, | |
| There ’s comfort in her tranquil ray: | 40 |
| What power is hers to soothe the heart— | |
| What power, the trembling tear to start! | |
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| The dewy morn let others love, | |
| Or bask them in the noontide ray; | |
| There ’s not an hour but has its charm, | 45 |
| From dawning light to dying day:— | |
| But oh! be mine a fairer boon— | |
| That silent moon, that silent moon! | |
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