Ode To A Moonlit Night Poem by Emdad Shah Emdad

by Emdad Shah

O, wretched soul, that never saw the moon
Who knows no laughter in the fruitless tune
From whose torn breast no songs of longing rise
Yet grief is piled a mountain to the skies.

Upon love's heaven the moon forever smiles
And draws two distant souls through starry miles
They share the nectar of one silver beam—
What garden holds a fairer, sweeter dream?

That gentle radiance falls like ripened grain
And scatters peace to soothe the heart of pain
Yet if this light can touch no answering chord
When fires of separation are outpoured
To miss the moon proclaims a vacant mind
Or one to sacred striving quite unkind
Or one who dwells where endless shadows creep
And makes the dark his everlasting sleep.

Whose eyes are shut to moonbeams, he is dead
No light is in his heart, where gloom is spread
How does the moon sow peace upon the sod?
What greater beauty has been shown by God?

When autumn suns at eventide decline
And mists are gathering where the rivers shine
I stand alone beside the winding way
Where leaves are sleeping at the close of day
And only one lone bird still sings its say.

Sudden, from branches where the shadows cling
The moon ascends, a silver-wingèd thing
A mystic bracelet spanning half the sky
I catch its silver music as it flies on high.

It guides my footsteps through the lonely night
And seems to wander with no goal in sight
Yet rests above the solitary hill
Why sheds it down that smile so pure and chill
A light so gentle, void of fear or heat That draws my wandering spirit to its feet?

It is the gaze of some primeval way
That watches human passions melt away
And smiles in silence at our petty dreams
Beside the turning of the misty streams.

Is moon-light given just to guide our tread
Or soothe the lonely wanderer's heart instead?
The world grows darker in its midnight sleep
While silver phantoms o'er the meadows creep
The earth is resting in its quiet dream
While I awake beneath that lonely beam.

Beyond the casement where the peepul grows
A silver platter through the darkness glows
Not magic light, nor born of sorcery
A lonely traveler, knowing where to be
The leaves that shadow out upon the floor
Would count the heavy debts of life once more.

This light will never warm me with its ray
Yet brings strange comfort as it steals away
Though branches strive to hold it to the breast
It keeps its orbit and its lonely quest
I too would wander down my single way
Enwrapped in silence, far from human day
The moon today recalls a silent strife
To keep some light within the bounds of life—

Through all the lonely paths my feet have crossed
In mountain mists, where travelers are lost
Where only with my shadow I confer—
The moon, too, has its laws, decreed for her
Bound by the self-same rules that mortals know
To tread the pathways where the shadows go.

A weary wanderer through the quiet night
I am the poet, child of lonely light
Of starry skies and my own solitude
Who walks beside his shadow