Moonlight by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As the moon emerges from clouds, the speaker's familiar path and trees seem to become an enchanted avenue and an unfamiliar town. The speaker calls this transformation an illusion, attributing it to the spirit, and concludes that people find in their surroundings what they bring to seeing them.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry, Nature Poetry · 301 words
First lines
As a pale phantom with a lamp / Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, / So glides the moon along the damp / Mysterious chambers of the air.
Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, / As if this phantom, full of pain, / Were by the crumbling walls concealed, / And at the windows seen again.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Eight rhymed quatrains follow the speaker's changing perception of familiar surroundings under moonlight.
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker identifies the transformed scene as an illusion and reflects on how inward vision shapes what people see.
- Nature Poetry — The moon's movement through clouds and the elm-trees' shadows shape the speaker's experience of the nighttime landscape.
Tags
clouds · perception · illusion · imagination
What this Textopian page supports
Moonlight is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry, Nature Poetry
- Length: 301 words
- Structure: 1 section, 8 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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