In “The Moon,” by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the speaker compares the rising moon to a “dying lady” (1) who “totters forth” (2) and is “insane” (3), apparently led by the “feeble wanderings of her fading brain” (4). In the second stanza, the speaker asks the moon if she is “pale” because of “weariness” (7) or from “climbing heaven and gazing on the earth” (8). He suggests that she wanders without a companion (9), alienated from the stars (10) and shifting her gaze continually (11) because she finds nothing worth her constant attention (12).