ABSTRACT
Mary published this fragment without date in 1824 under the title The Waning Moon. In 1839 she included it among the Poems Written in 1820, perhaps because she knew the circumstances of its composition; but the position of the draft in Nbk 12, near the beginning of the reverse direction of the nbk, suggests instead a date in summer or early autumn 1819. The fragment was transcribed into both Mary Copybk 1 and Mary Copybk 2. The differences between the two transcriptions are recorded in the notes below, as are the differences between the 1824 text and the draft in Nbk 12. As Mary's title in 1824 indicates, the lines describe a waning crescent moon (dying, lean, fading) observed as it rises in the east. Mist in the atmosphere blurs its shape and veils its light. At the top of the page in the position of a title S. has written with a different pen-point the figure 240,000 — the approximate average distance in miles from earth to the moon. This is now calculated at 238,857 miles. Nicholson's British Encyclopaedia (1807–09), which S. owned, gives the distance as about 239,000 miles. This conventional poet's exercise of an address to the moon may be compared to To the Moon and to Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven.
