The waning moon | The moon | And, like a dying lady, lean and pale

And, like a dying lady, lean and pale

Language: English

And, [like]¹ a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass...

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Available sung texts: ← What is this?

• B. Rands

B. Rands sets stanza 1

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¹ Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "as"; further changes may exist not shown above.

Text Authorship:

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "The waning moon", first published 1824 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by Jack Hamilton Beeson (b. 1921), "The moon", 1952, rev. 1959, 1995, first performed 1958 [ high voice and piano ], from Six Lyrics, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]
by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895 - 1968), "The Moon", op. 154 no. 7, published 1954 [ SSA chorus ], New York, Leeds Music [sung text not yet checked]
by Arnold Atkinson Cooke (1906 - 2005), "The moon", alternate title: "To the moon: And like a dying lady", 1956, published 1963 [ soprano, horn, and piano ], from Nocturnes, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
by Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963), "The moon", published 1944 [ high voice or medium voice and piano ], from Nine English Songs, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Bernard Rands (b. 1934), "The waning moon", published 1980, first performed 1981, stanza 1 [ soprano and orchestra ], from Canti lunatici, no. 14, London : Universal Edition [sung text checked 1 time]
by Alexander Lang Steinert (1900 - 1982), "The waning moon", published 1932, from Three Poems by Shelley, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Mizící měsíc", Prague, J. Otto, first published 1901

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 82