Full Blue Supermoon Tonight!

Hello everyone –

Tonight, skywatchers around the world will be watching a celestial rarity – a full blue supermoon – and residents of the Pacific Rim will be able to see a total eclipse of the Moon! You can read all about tonight’s lunar events at Earth & Sky, with a special feature article available from http://earthsky.org/tonight/super-blue-moon-eclipse-on-january-31.

So just what is a Blue Moon? It’s the second Full Moon in a calendar month – a phenomenon that happens only once every 2-1/2 years or so (hence the expression, “Once in a Blue Moon”). The Moon won’t actually appear blue in the sky tonight – but that’s OK – it will still be bright and beautiful, like every other Full Moon that I’ve ever seen.

To celebrate this auspicious occasion, here are some of my favorite poems about the Moon, which has been my favorite celestial object for as long as I can remember! J

Introduction to Our First Poem:

            The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus – celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their protoscientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the forces of Nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways that they do.  In the following poem, we can learn how the ancient Greeks perceived the Moon, not as a dead rock in space, but as a living entity (or as a celestial orb ruled by a divine guardian – in this case, Artemis [in Greek] or Diana [in Latin]).

Orphic Hymn #8: TO THE MOON

(The FUMIGATION from AROMATICS)

Hear, divine queen, diffusing silver light,

Bull-horned and wandering through the gloom of Night.

With stars surrounded, and with circuit wide

Night’s torch extending, through the heavens you ride:

Female and Male with borrowed rays you shine,

And now full-orbed, now tending to decline.

Mother of ages, fruit-producing Moon,

Whose amber orb makes Night’s reflected noon:

Lover of horses, splendid, queen of Night,

All-seeing power bedecked with starry light.

Lover of vigilance, the foe of strife,

In peace rejoicing, and a prudent life:

Fair lamp of Night, its ornament and friend,

Who gives to Nature’s works their destined end.

Queen of the stars, all-wife Diana hail!

Decked with a graceful robe and shining veil;

Come, blessed, divine, prudent, starry, bright,

Come lunar-lamp with chaste and splendid light,

Shine on these sacred rites with prosperous rays,

And pleased accept your suppliant’s mystic praise.

“Faeries”

By Evaleen Stein
 

Grandfather says that sometimes,
When stars are twinkling and
A New Moon shines, there come times
When folks see faery-land!

So when there’s next a New Moon,
I mean to watch all night!
Grandfather says a Blue Moon
Is best for faery light,

And in a peach-bloom, maybe,
If I look I shall see
A little faery baby
No bigger than a bee!

“Eldorado”

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,  

Had journeyed long,  

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—  

And o’er his heart a shadow—  

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength  

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—  

 ‘Shadow,’ said he,  

 ‘Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?’

‘Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,  

Ride, boldly ride,’

The shade replied,—

‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

“The Moon” (From A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885)

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

The Moon has a face like the clock in the hall;

She shines on thieves on the garden wall,

On streets and fields and harbor quays,

And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,

The howling dog by the door of the house,

The bat that lies in bed at noon,

All love to be out by the light of the Moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day

Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;

And flowers and children close their eyes

Till up in the morning the Sun shall arise.

Until next time – keep looking up! :)

Rob