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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He...
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FURTHER READING
Poems about the Moon
Anyway
by Richard Siken
Conversation Galante
by T.S. Eliot
If the Owl Calls Again
by John Haines
Moonlight
by Sara Teasdale
Night Baseball
by Michael Blumenthal
The Creation of the Moon
by Anonymous
The Harvest Moon
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Moon in Time Lapse
by David Rivard
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
by Edward Lear
They Lived Enamoured of the Lovely Moon
by Trumbull Stickney
Untitled [and the moon once it stopped was sleeping]
by Erika Meitner
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Lunar Paraphrase

 
by Wallace Stevens

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness—

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.







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