Lyric Poem · Nature

Moonlight

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Reading room

1As a pale phantom with a lamp

2Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,

3So glides the moon along the damp

4Mysterious chambers of the air.

5Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,

6As if this phantom, full of pain,

7Were by the crumbling walls concealed,

8And at the windows seen again.

9Until at last, serene and proud

10In all the splendor of her light,

11She walks the terraces of cloud,

12Supreme as Empress of the Night.

13I look, but recognize no more

14Objects familiar to my view;

15The very pathway to my door

16Is an enchanted avenue.

17All things are changed. One mass of shade,

18The elm-trees drop their curtains down;

19By palace, park, and colonnade

20I walk as in a foreign town.

21The very ground beneath my feet

22Is clothed with a diviner air;

23While marble paves the silent street

24And glimmers in the empty square.

25Illusion! Underneath there lies

26The common life of every day;

27Only the spirit glorifies

28With its own tints the sober gray.

29In vain we look, in vain uplift

30Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind;

31We see but what we have the gift

32Of seeing; what we bring we find.

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“Moonlight” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — quilloak.com/poems/moonlight

Quick facts

Poem: Moonlight
Poet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Length: 32 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Nature, Peace

Craft notes

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Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 32 lines · 8 quatrains
Line length: Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).

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Author record: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882
Source record: PoetryDBMoonlight by henry-wadsworth-longfellow, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
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Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Nature Peace

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