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 joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

(Title: To the Moon)
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 joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
But lonely all, as if she pined
For somewhat of companionship,
And felt it was in vain she shined:
Earth is her mirror, and the stars
Are as the court around her throne;
She is a beauty and a queen;
But what is this? she is alone.

She was young and very beautiful, but pale, like the grey pallor of death.

She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heav'n's wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee why so pale?

The moon was drenching the sky with loneliness. (p107)

Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Prithee, why so pale?

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.

You are the dark shape I find
On nights of the spilling moon,
Pale in the pool of heaven. — N. Scott Momaday, from “Revenant” The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 2020)

The moon is darkened in the sky
As if grief 's shade were passing by;