The Moon and Thoreau 



Gladys A. Harper 

 Yardly, Penn. 



"The full-orbed moon with unchanged ray 



Mounts up the eastern sky 

 Not doomed to those short nights for aye, 



But shining steadily." 



"She does not wane, but my fortune, 



Which her rays do not bless; 

 My wayward path declineth soon, 



But she shines not the less." 



"And if she faintly glimmers here, 



And palid is her light, 

 Yet alway in her proper sphere 



She's mistress of the night." 



— Thoreau. 



The above is one of the lovely ways in which Thoreau expresses 

 the majesty of the moon. Thoreau makes one feel the beauty and 

 grandeur of things around one. In this particular case he is making 

 his reader feel that they simply must study the moon and the moon- 

 light — again and again to see all that they have not before observed. 



The moon is a little dead world which circles around the world 

 with one face always turned toward us. There are light and dark 

 areas on the moon. One-half of the moon is always in shadow as 

 is also the earth because the sun can shine on only one side of a 

 sphere at a given time. Our earth is foiu* times as wide as the moon. 

 It takes the moon twenty-nine and one-half days to go around the 

 earth. The length of the moon day is 14^ days long and the night 

 14^ days long. The path of the moon in sim-jner is nearly the 

 same as the sun's. 



The moon generally rises fifty minutes later each night. How- 

 ever the time varies. In August it rises sometimes not less than 

 thirty minutes later each night. The fuU moon rises at sunset and 

 sets at stinrise. 



The moon shines by reflected light. Moonlight is a cold dewy 

 light in which vapors of the day are condensed and though the air 

 is obscured by darkness it is more clear. Moonlight as defined in 

 Reed's Cyclopedia is "The light of the moon, condensed by the 

 best mirrors, with an intensity that produces no sensible heat upon 

 the thermometer. The light of the moon is very inferior in quantity 



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