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Title: On The Curious Circumstance
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
More Titles by Coleridge]
ON THE CURIOUS CIRCUMSTANCE,
THAT IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE THE SUN IS FEMININE,
AND THE MOON IS MASCULINE
Our English poets, bad and good, agree
To make the Sun a male, the Moon a she.
He drives HIS dazzling diligence on high,
In verse, as constantly as in the sky;
And cheap as blackberries our sonnets shew
The Moon, Heaven's huntress, with HER silver bow;
By which they'd teach us, if I guess aright,
Man rules the day, and woman rules the night.
In Germany, they just reverse the thing;
The Sun becomes a queen, the Moon a king.
Now, that the Sun should represent the women,
The Moon the men, to me seem'd mighty humming;
And when I first read German, made me stare.
Surely it is not that the wives are there
As _common_ as the Sun, to lord and loon,
And all their husbands _hornéd_ as the Moon.
First published in _Morning Post_, Oct. 11, 1802. Adapted from Wernicke's _Epigrams_ (Bk. VII, No. 15), _Die Sonne und der Mond_.
'Die Sonn' heisst die, der Mond heisst der
In unsrer Sprach', und kommt daher,
Weil meist die Fraun wie die _gemein_,
Wie der _gehörnt_ wir Männer sein.'
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: On The Curious Circumstance
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