Lyric Poem · Nature
The Waning Moon
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped 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 —
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“The Waning Moon” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/the-waning-moon
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Waning Moon
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 6 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Nature, Death & Loss, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
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
- 6 lines · one 6-line stanza
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBThe Waning Moon by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 93c683db89b6e077…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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