MOONSHINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

MOONSHINE.

BY LUNA. The moon is shining full upon my face as I lie in bed ; it is rather strange to awaken to her direct stare. She is a pagan priestess and is luring me out to worship occult powers. Centuries of Christianity have net converted her. . There is a common superstition.against sleeping in the moonlight; you must not j even drink water, be it from cup or river I or fountain, on , which the moonlight is falling. The sun is wholesome, life-giving, purifying,. an enemy . of' 'mystery and J of • evil 'spirits;; the moon is weird a.nd uncanny, a weaver of magic spells, the' patroness of all that is obscure, and ghostly. .>'■-_ <~ <~. She sways the tides of the sea' arid the minds of men. Many persons if they found the moon shining on them at night would arise and draw the curtain. '' : But I will laugh at such absurd fantasies and cast away - the dreams of moonridden men. She is the shepherdess of the skies, leading forth the stars and fleecy cloudlets to their broad azure pastures. She, is the exiled wife of the sun, and the stars are their children. She is the friend of the harvesters, as her light falls in a calm, mellow flood across the cornfields in which they are labouring. It is beautiful to see her bathing the shocks of grain; there can be nothing unkindly or malevolent in such a. stream of light, though there may be something mystic. She sees some things that the sun can. never see; he is blinded with excess ?of light. Compared with his, her light is as water compared with wine. It can wash the tree tops in silver, but it cannot penetrate their umbrageous depths; it cannot illumine the shadows, as the sun can. But it can do something that the sun never does; it can. render the baldest and barest scene poetical and can transfigure the unsightly into loveliness and symmetry. It has the glory of the half-light-; the depth and suggestiveness of partial obscurity. Sunlight is at its best in its rising or its setting; but the moonlight is at its best in its noontide, though the moon herself may appear most alluring when she is a. mere fleeting crescent. ■ ; ' Heine tells us how, when he was a boy, the moon called him from his bed into the garden, where a. lovely statue of a Greek goddess was lying among the grass arid bushes. He (tells us how the thought of that skittle brought him to the spot—how he stooped and pressed his lips passionately on those of the goddess; and the kiss thrilled his memory ever after the first impa.ssioned kiss of youth. It was the moon that wrought the magic. The sun would have stared rudely at the overthrown image and laughed at the dead faith that it symbolised, but the moon loved it and sympathised with it. For the moon's whole life is a reflection and a memory; she is the nurse of recollections, the "friend of forlorn hopes, the remembrancer of dead faiths and bygone fancies. She can reach comers of the mind that the sun does not enter. Sometimes these corners are dank and noisome, haunts of remorse or of madness. ( That is not her fault; she would purify ; them if she could. It is not her fault that- | we deem her the mother of madness and style foolish dreams as moonshine. "She can smile peacefully and lovingly on ' the slumber of a child and bring nothing but images of fairyland to soothe its slumbers; she can gaze fondly on the meetings of youth and maiden, where there is nothing* but innocent love and faith. - It is not her fault if the vicious and the unwholesome , and the criminal thrust themselves under her notice. She . would far rather watch the calm } sleeping of the babe, the nest of the bird on the treetop or in the cottage eaves; she loves also to glide above the graves where tired mortals lie in slumber. She will gaze also through the ivied windows of the village church, but she cannot cany the stain of coloured casements with her— light passes through them to fall white and misty. In this she differs from the sun. which' can be transfigured while it transfigures. The moon is colourless beyond her own vague gold, and she does not cany colour. But sometimes the atmosphere of an autumn night can transform her whiteness to the redness of blood and the passing clouds can play many tricks with her appearance. It is she "that enables them to turn then- silver linings to the night; bub thev can veil her or mask her entirely. Folk say that the moon will eat the I clouds: but the victory is not always hers. ' It is fine in tempest to watch them racing t past her, for a moment leaving a. casement, through which she can gaze and then giving us onlv fleeting glimpses of her 1«OT through a ■ chaotic ' wreckage of •;sky dim. A mass of blackness will blot -m every ■dimmer; then a break in the clouds .will .Some once more, showing the: moon ma deep blue lake of peacefully and loniancutl calm. The trouble of the heavens as only skin-deep, the welter of broken clouds, the" massing of titanic blackness; a lew miles above is the restful and unchanging realm of eternal .peace. . , '