It seems unreasonable to see an eclipse, live or in immediate photos and not think of this poem and the Debussy work that follows it below. Are there a lot of things in your life that you have seen from the earliest that still are so beautiful?
Clair De Lune [English]
Paul Verlaine
Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.
The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,
The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.