The Moon Songs

  (What Grandpa told the Children)

The moon? It is a griffin's egg,
    Hatching to-morrow night. 
And how the little boys will watch 
With shouting and delight 
To see him break the shell and stretch 
And creep across the sky. 
The boys will laugh. The little girls, 
I fear, may hide and cry. 
Yet gentle will the griffin be, 
Most decorous and fat, 
And walk up to the Milky Way 
And lap it like a cat.

The moon is but a golden skull,
She mounts the heavens now,
And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms
Are wreathed around her brow.

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race:
They eat her gray and golden face.
Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head:
These caverns are their dwelling-place.

The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies,
From the great hollows of her eyes
Behold all souls, and they are wise:
With tiny, keen and icy eyes,
Behold how each man sins and dies.

When Earth in gold-corruption lies
Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies
On cyclone wings will reach this place -
Yea, rear their brood on earth's dead face.

   When does the moon look like a cooky with a big bite out of it?
   I wonder who eats the moon-scraps.

   What the Little Girl said

The Moon's the North Wind's cooky.
He bites it, day by day, 
Until there's but a rim of scraps 
That crumble all away.

The South Wind is a baker. 
He kneads clouds in his den, 
And bakes a crisp new moon that . . . greedy 
North . . . Wind . . . eats . . . again!

The moon's a brass-hooped water-keg,
A wondrous water-feast.
If I could climb the ridge and drink
And give drink to my beast;
If I could drain that keg, the flies
Would not be biting so,
My burning feet be spry again,
My mule no longer slow.
And I could rise and dig for ore,
And reach my fatherland,
And not be food for ants and hawks
And perish in the sand.

The moon's a little prairie-dog.
He shivers through the night.
He sits upon his hill and cries
For fear that I will bite.

The sun's a broncho. He's afraid
Like every other thing,
And trembles, morning, noon and night,
Lest I should spring, and sting.

The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.

They turn to stars or shadows,
They go like snow or dew --
Leaving behind no sorrow --
Only the arching blue. 

The dew, the rain and moonlight
All prove our Father's mind.
The dew, the rain and moonlight
Descend to bless mankind.

Come, let us see that all men
Have land to catch the rain,
Have grass to snare the spheres of dew,
And fields spread for the grain.

Yea, we would give to each poor man
Ripe wheat and poppies red, --
A peaceful place at evening
With the stars just overhead:

A net to snare the moonlight,
A sod spread to the sun,
A place of toil by daytime,
Of dreams when toil is done.