Two great female writers, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, let the Moon spark beautiful thoughts. It is interesting how they both describe the Moon in a very similar way. As something absolute compared to a human life on Earth.
I watched the Moon around the House
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane—
She stopped—a Traveller’s privilege—for Rest—
And there upon
I gazed—as at a stranger—
The Lady in the Town
Doth think no incivility
To lift her Glass—upon—
But never Stranger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine—for not a Foot—nor Hand—
Nor Formula—had she—
But like a Head—a Guillotine
Slid carelessly away—
Did independent, Amber—
Sustain her in the sky—
Or like a Stemless Flower—
Upheld in rolling Air
By finer Gravitations—
Than bind Philosopher—
No Hunger—had she—nor an Inn—
Her Toilette—to suffice—
Nor Avocation—nor Concern
For little Mysteries
As harass us—like Life—and Death—
And Afterwards—or Nay—
But seemed engrossed to Absolute—
With shining—and the Sky—
The privilege to scrutinize
Was scarce upon my Eyes
When, with a Silver practise—
She vaulted out of Gaze—
And next—I met her on a Cloud—
Myself too far below
To follow her superior Road—
Or its advantage—Blue—
F593 (1863) J629
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three: 1925-1930
I see the mountains in the sky; the great clouds; and the moon; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is “it”—it is not exactly beauty that I mean. It is that the thing is in itself enough: satisfactory, achieved. A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too: of the infinite oddity of the human position; with the moon up there and those mountain clouds.