Philothea's Insomnia

Man on the Moon

Man on the moon,

I see your worn and hollow face

Though half veiled.

Through your midnight covering,

One tear filled eye is clearly visible

And in your crevices,

I can make out the marks of harsher years.

But why do you weep,

Thou who gives light to our darker hours?

Why do you weap –

Hidden away above our earthly cares?

Did you see me sitting here,

Quietly shedding tears

From my own newly broken spirit?

Did you see my soul,

Understand my fears

And feel in them the suffering

Of hundreds of years –

The old apprehensions

And the new found pain

Experienced by Dido,

Cleopatra,

Jane;

The unrivaled pain of broken hearts.

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer - Keats

“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, 
    And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
    Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
    That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; 
    Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
    When a new planet swims into his ken; 
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
    He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men 
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— 
    Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

-John Keats