[Hardy-l] Hardy and the Lunar Eclipse

[Rosemarie Morgan]

Thank you for this, Bill --  we didn't take Hardy's poem out on the  deck 
in the glittering icy night but we did watch the beautiful celestial event 
with many  gasps =-  Nor was it monochrome (sorry Hardy) but a deep glowing 
gold -- incredibly beautiful and vividly clear even in the city skies.  And 
all the more poignant for the fact that it may never recur in our lifetime.

Sigh ...
Rosemarie
PS -- now that we've all been discussing Hardy's poems for some years now 
on the POTM and have his work on our breakfast table, so to speak, I was 
struck with how "young" his "At a Lunar Eclipse" is  and how I wouldn't 
have noticed that ten years ago.


>         If you step outside tonight to see the predicted total eclipse of
>the moon, you might want to take Hardy's early sonnet, "At a Lunar Eclipse,"
>along with you as a kind of commentary on the event:
>
>         At a Lunar Eclipse
>
>Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
>Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
>In even monochrome and curving line
>Of imperturbable serenity.
>
>How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
>With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
>That profile, placid as a brow divine,
>With continents of moil and misery?
>
>And can immense mortality but throw
>So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
>Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
>
>Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
>Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
>Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
>
>                                             186_
>Cheers,
>
>Bill Morgan