Moon-Madness by Victor Starbuck
Last night the moon (which was either full or nearly full) was shining through some hazy clouds, and it looked really cool, so I thought I’d post this poem.
Moon-Madness
By Victor Starbuck
They did not know that the moon had shone
All night across my face:
And they marvelled why I wandered alone
Picking up acorns and pebbles of stone
In a solitary place.
How should they know I had dreamed all night
With the moonbeams on my eyes
Of a goddess slender and tall and white
Who walked in a garden of strange delight
In the regions of Paradise?
They wondered why I was rapt and pale,
Haggard and ill at ease;
For they did not know I had watched a sail
Like a shimmering mist where the dream-winds fail
On magical, moon-bright seas.
And they questioned, “Why does he linger there
Where the grass is withered and dead,
With dry leaves tangled among his hair,
And fingers that tremble, and eyes astare?
”He is mad, quite mad,” they said.
They could not know of the songs I heard
In the fair Moon-Gardens; nor why
I listened there for a whispered word,
And started at pipe of a sudden bird
Or wept when the wind went by.
