The Crazed Moon
The Crazed Moon - meaning Summary
Motherhood as Lunar Madness
Yeats portrays the moon as a destabilizing maternal figure whose influence produces suffering and malformed offspring. The poem contrasts an early, organising lunar sovereignty that inspired vitality with a later 'crazed' moon whose gaze brings despair, blanched hands, and grotesque progeny. Imagery of stumbling, child-bearing, and predatory hands suggests social and psychic damage transmitted by a failing, obsessive force beyond human control.
Read Complete AnalysesCrazed through much child-bearing The moon is staggering in the sky; Moon-struck by the despairing Glances of her wandering eye We grope, and grope in vain, For children born of her pain. Children dazed or dead! When she in all her virginal pride First trod on the mountain's head What stir ran through the countryside Where every foot obeyed her glance! What manhood led the dance! Fly-catchers of the moon, Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem But slender needles of bone; Blenched by that malicious dream They are spread wide that each May rend what comes in reach.
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