In this section, we will share a selection of poems about eclipses that we found interesting to show to our public…
Eclipses are everywhere… Not only in paintings and music, but also in poetry… Around the world… We share here some examples…
As Mabel Loomis Todd, friend of Emily Dickinson, said, “I doubt if the effect of witnessing a total eclipse ever quite passes away… A startling nearness to the gigantic forces of nature and their inconceivable operation seems to have been established.”
It is true, I (Norma) had my first experience of witnessing an annular solar eclipse and complete annularity (I saw a ring of fire around the moon)… And it is remarkable… It is impacting… In my experience, there were people dancing and singing, as is common in Brazilian celebrations… Special events…
A Solar Eclipse
This poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 –1919) is in the public domain and it talks about travel through the stars, and talks about the sun and moon, Astronomy, and it mentions a solar eclipse at the end…
In that great journey of the stars through space
About the mighty, all-directing Sun,
The pallid, faithful Moon, has been the one
Companion of the Earth. Her tender face,
Pale with the swift, keen purpose of that race,
Which at Time’s natal hour was first begun,
Shines ever on her lover as they run
And lights his orbit with her silvery smile.
Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise,
Down from her beaten path she softly slips,
And with her mantle veils the Sun’s bold eyes,
Then in the gloaming finds her lover’s lips.
While far and near the men our world call wise
See only that the Sun is in eclipse.
Seeing the Eclipse in Maine
This poem by Robert Bly talks about the pinhole camera, which is a method many teachers use in schools for safe observation of the sun… You can find a section on our website about the pinhole method… Not only teachers and students use this method, but also many Astronomy lovers around the world… It is dangerous to stare at the sun at any time, due to the risk of serious eye injury or even blindness… Looking at the sun safely is thus serious business…
It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte,
We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.
It was hard to believe. The high school teacher
We’d met called it a pinhole camera,
People in the Renaissance loved to do that.
And when the moon had passed partly through
We saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,
Dozens of crescents—made the same way—
Thousands! Even our straw hats produced
A few as we moved them over the bare granite.
We shared chocolate, and one man from Maine
Told a joke. Suns were everywhere—at our feet.
Poem copyright © 1997 by Robert Bly, whose most recent book of poetry is My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, Harper Perennial, 2006. Poem reprinted from Music, Pictures, and Stories, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 2002, by permission of the writer. Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51207/seeing-the-eclipse-in-maine
The Solar Eclipse Poem
This poem by Vikram Aarella talks about a solar eclipse, mentioning that it happens only in some occasions during a millenium… Indeed total solar eclipses are rare phenomena and happen only occasionally in a given location of the world… The path of totality is not so broad… You can read about lunar and solar eclipses on reliable sources such as the NASA website…
Was it night in day? ,
When nature has its say
Everyone ought to obey
It has to be that way.
Fear gripped the world
As moon moved forward,
Cutting through the sun like a sword
Giving the mighty star no regard.
Like the meeting of old buddies,
Met these two heavenly bodies.
Watch and enjoy it to the maximum,
As it happens just a few times in a millenium.
With a finger on your lips,
Watch the solar eclipse.
Copyright V.G.Aarella. Source: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-solar-eclipse/
A Poem by Archilocus
This is a poem written around 2500 years ago on April 6, 648 BC by Archilochus, a Greek lyric poet from the island of Paros who was well-known for composing poems based on his emotions and experiences. What remains of the poem Archilochus composed is a fragment that recounts a solar eclipse, where things get weird quickly… Translated by Aaron Poochigian.
Nothing’s unreasonable, nothing too much, nothing stunning,
now that Zeus the Father of the Gods has cloaked the light
to make it night at noontime, even though the sun was shining.
Terrible dread has fallen upon men. From here on out
all that we human beings have assumed will be in doubt,
and no one should be shocked to see, in briny acres, land
animals, walking creatures, having sex with dolphins, when
their four legs come to love the sounding waves more than the sand,
and dolphins with their flippers come to love a mountain glen.
Love Poems
The following poems provide a romantic approach to the solar eclipse… They relate the astromonical phenomenon to romance… There are legends that talk about a romance between the sun and moon, it is described by the Aborigenes… the sun and moon would pull curtains in the sky to ensure their privacy… It is a meeting among science, the arts and human feelings and emotions…
A romantic poem (Title Unknown)
I look at the solar eclipse
And at the moment that
The sun kisses the moon
And puts both of them
on fire
I think;
This is us.
S/A Gentlemen’s Lounge Members Only 2015 – www.facebook.com/agentlemansloungemembersonly
Source: https://br.pinterest.com/pin/37084396916366756/
Another romantic eclipse poem (Title Unknown)
Sometimes, I think of the
sun and moon as lovers
who rarely meet, always chase,
and almost always misso one
another. But once in a while,
they do catch up, and they
kiss, and the world stares in
awe of their eclipse.
Source: https://br.pinterest.com/pin/Az4KfQEQAGkAqfMFdGAHHXM/
Eclipse
Loving you is like being a moon falling in love with the sun, always from afar, never meeting, never touching.
We may exist in the same galaxy, breathe the same space, bound by the same time-continuum, created by the same Creator, yet here I am, and there are you, both of us tied to Earth out of obligation.
And then the people would always wonder why the moon is mercurial and moody, always waxing and waning, when they never know of our story, of a love that never meets.
Once in a while though, the heavens would pity us and would give us a chance to meet face to face and a solar eclipse would happen. I would bask in your warmth and all the people would watch in awe. Our encounters though never lasted for long, it always end as soon as it begin. Once in a while, the heavens would also remind us that our love is never meant to be, and a lunar eclipse would happen. On those days when I couldn’t even see your face, and your warmth couldn’t even reach me, all I can do is shed tetars made of blood. And the people would wonder why the moon is so red then, whey they never know of our story, of a love that never touches.
cynthia go
Source: https://br.pinterest.com/pin/6966574418482328/
This poem is about a love that never happens… Love is purely human I guess… Although animals also have a unique way of loving us… But only human beings have the ability to communicate love in words… And the main love of all is that of God for us, communicated through the Bible…
In that specific poem, the author says that the moon eventually meets the sun during the eclipse, but it is a quick encounter, and they do not touch…
Romantic eclipse poem (Title Unknown)
i hope ours
is not the love story
of the moon
and the sun
never still
constantly shifting
to spend a few
moments together
and a world apart
again
Source: https://br.pinterest.com/pin/72268769011033700/
Eclipse of Our Love
In shadows, our fingers entwine,
Under a moon, cloaked and shy.
Stars blink in a hesitant line,
As day kisses night goodbye.
Source: https://literaturevaults.com/eclipse-love-poems/
The following poem is interesting because it describes how birds stop singing… Actually, nature changes, animals behave with fear of the phenomenon… In Ancient times people thought that the sun was a god with enemies to fight… And that solar light could never reappear… But animals have always feared total solar eclipses, because the day becomes night and it is scary for them… They must have the impression that something is wrong in nature…
The poem also describes the sun as a king, telling that it retakes its throne… In many parts of the world people call the sun a king, probably because it shines more than any other celestial body in the sky…
Eclipse Waltz
The sun held high,
a radiant king,
till moon, a stealthy scribe,
slides in between.
Light dims to dusk,
day meets a pause,
as shadows merge,
in silent awe.
A chill descends,
birds cease their song,
the world stands still,
yet not for long.
For soon the sun,
with gentle grace,
reclaims its throne,
lights up the place.
Source: https://literaturevaults.com/poems-about-solar-eclipse/#end-words
The following is a beautiful eclipse image… Combining nature and the total solar eclipse, the world’s most awe-inspiring astronomical phenomenon…
See figure here – Countryside eclipse. Source: https://literaturevaults.com/acrostic-poems-for-eclipse/#eclipse
The following is a beautiful poem talking about the sun, moon and total solar eclipse… In Samson Agonistes the total solar eclipse is a metaphor for Samson’s blindness and his feelings of spiritual and physical isolation:
John Milton, Samson Agonistes
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
An excerpt from John Milton’s, Samson Agonistes 80-89, Luxon, Thomas H. Ed. The Milton Reading Room, May, 2019.
Source: https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/curations/c1-eclipse-literature.html
Total solar eclipses are awe-inspiring phenomena and it is no surprise that so many poets and writers around the world in different times wrote inspired by feelings of enchantment and love related to them…
Let’s visit now a poem that does not talk about a total solar eclipse, but about a lunar eclipse… It is an exception, as most poems talking about eclipses talk about solar eclipses…
Thomas Hardy, At a Lunar Eclipse
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?
And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy. ed. James Gibson. New Yoir: MacMillan, 1976. p. 79.
Source: https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/curations/c1-eclipse-literature.html
Even Shakespeare wrote about eclipses, as we will see now…
Eclipses in Shakespeare – The physical darkness of an eclipse as a metaphor for psychological darkness
“My wife, my wife! What wife? I have no wife.
O insupportable! O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.”
—Othello in Othello (5.2.121-125)
Eclipses in Shakespeare – An eclipse as an ill omen
“These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of
nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds
itself scourged by the sequent effects.”
—Gloucester in King Lear (1.2.109-112)
References
Eclipses in History 