“He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no.”

—  Samuel Butler (poet)

Canto III, line 261
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He made an instrument to know If the moon shine at full or no." by Samuel Butler (poet)?
Samuel Butler (poet) photo
Samuel Butler (poet)81
poet and satirist 1612–1680

Related quotes

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“The Lake was that deep blue, which night
Wears in the zenith moon's full light;
With pebbles shining thro', like gems
Lighting sultana's diadems :”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(2nd October 1824) The Lake
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Clifford D. Simak photo

“In the east the moon was rising, a full moon that lighted the landscape so that he could see every little clump of bushes, every grove of trees. And as he stood there, he realized with a sudden start that the moon was full again, that it was always full, it rose with the setting of the sun and set just before the sun came up, and it was always a great pumpkin of a moon, an eternal harvest moon shining on an eternal autumn world.
The realization that this was so all at once seemed shocking. How was it that he had never noticed this before? Certainly he had been here long enough, had watched the moon often enough to have noticed it. He had been here long enough — and how long had that been, a few weeks, a few months, a year? He found he did not know. He tried to figure back and there was no way to figure back. There were no temporal landmarks. Nothing ever happened to mark one day from the next. Time flowed so smoothly and so uneventfully that it might as well stand still.”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

“The Autumn Land” (p. 251)
Short Fiction, Skirmish (1977)

John Lennon photo

“We all shine on… like the moon and the stars and the sun… we all shine on… come on and on and on…”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
Source: Song Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)

Han-shan photo

“Once, my back wedded to the solid cliff,
I sat silently, bathed in the full moon's light. I counted there ten thousand shapes,
None with substance save the moon's own glow. The pristine mind is empty as the moon,
I thought, and like the moon, freely shines. By what I knew of moon I knew the mind,
Each mirror to each, profound as stone.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Encounters With Cold Mountain, tr. Peter Stambler (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1996)

Ben Sherwood photo

“We all shine on in the moon and the stars and the sun.”

Ben Sherwood book The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

Source: The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

Chinua Achebe photo

“When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 2 (p. 14)

Wang Wei photo

“I sit alone in the secluded bamboo grove
and play the zither and whistle along.
In the deep forest no one knows,
the bright moon comes to shine on me.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Bamboo Grove" (竹里馆), as translated by Arthur Sze in The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (2013), p. 19
Variant translation:
Lying alone in this dark bamboo grove,
Playing on a flute, continually whistling,
In this dark wood where no one comes,
The bright moon comes to shine on me.
"In a Bamboo Grove" in The White Pony, ed. Robert Payne, p. 151

Wang Wei photo

“The bright moon shines between the pines.
The crystal stream flows over the pebbles.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Autumn Twilight in the Mountains" (山居秋暝), trans. Kenneth Rexroth

Francis Thompson photo

“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Sister Songs http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/ssngs10.txt, Pt. II (1908).

“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn't ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.”

Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893–1986) American writer

Source: Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography

Related topics