ARISTARCHUS
(The Mountain in the Moon)
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919)
It was long and long ago our love began;
It is something all unmeasured by Times's span.
In an era and a spot
By the modern world forgot,
We were lovers ere God named us maid and man.
Like the memory of music made by streams
All the beauty of that other love-life seems.
But I always thought it so,
And at last I know, I know-
We were lovers in the Land of Silver Dreams!
When the moon was at the full I found the place:
Out, and out, across the seas of shining space,
On a quest that could not fail,
I unfurled my Memory sail,
And cast anchor in the Bay of Love's First Grace!
At the foot of Aristarchus lies this bay.
(Oh, the wonder of that mountain far away!)
And the Land of Silver Dreams
All about it shines and gleams,
Where we loved, before God fashioned night or day.
We were souls in eery bodies, made of light;
We were winged, and we could speed from height to height;
And we built a nest called Hope
On the sheer moon mountain slope,
Where we sat and watched new worlds wheel into sight.
And we saw this little planet known as Earth,
When the mighty Mother Chaos gave it birth;
But in love's conceit we thought
All these worlds from space were brought,
For no greater aim, or purpose, than our mirth.
And we laughed in love's abandon, and we sang
Till the echoing peaks of Aristarchus rang,
As hot-hissing comets came,
And white suns burst into flame,
And a myriad of worlds from darkness sprang.
I can show you when the moon is at its best,
Aristarchus and the spot we made our nest.
Oh, I always wondered why,
When the moon was in the sky,
I was stirred with such strange longing and unrest.
And I knew the subtle beauty and the force
Of our love was never bound by earth's course!
So with Memory's sail unfurled,
I went cruising past this world
And I followed, till I traced it to its source.
An American Poet and Novelist, she was born in Wisconsin. She was extremely popular in her day. She wrote a sentimental novel when she was ten and her first essay was published when she was fourteen, her first poem not long after. She tried college for a while, but didn't like it and turned to newpaper work. When her Poems of Passion (1876) appeared, it was an overnight success because it was considered daring. She published more than forty volumes from Drops of Water (1872) to The Worlds and I (1918). Most of these were verse, some fiction, two autobiographical. Who does not know the first lines of "Solitude" "Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone?
