Do we love it because it is dead? as the poet Haraucourt says:
"Puis ce fut l'âge blond des tiédeurs et des vents.
La lune se peupla de murmures vivants:
Elle eut des mers sans fond et des fleuves sans nombre,
Des troupeaux, des cités, des pleurs, des cris joyeux,
Elle eut l'amour; elle eut ses arts, ses lois, ses dieux,
Et lentement rentra dans l'ombre."[1]
Do we love it because the poets, to whom we owe the eternal illusion that surrounds us in this world, have dimmed our sight by all the images they have seen in its pallid rays, have taught our over-excited sensibility to feel in a thousand different ways, the soft and monotonous effects it sheds over the world?
When it rises behind the trees, when it pours forth its shimmering light on the flowing river, when it descends through the boughs on to the sand of the shaded alleys, when it mounts solitary in the black and empty sky, when it dips towards the sea, stretching out on the undulating surface of the waters a vast pathway of light, are we not haunted by all the charming verses with which it has inspired great dreamers?
If we wander forth by night in joyous spirits, and if we see its smooth circle, round like a yellow eye watching us, perched just over a roof, Musset's immortal ballad is recalled to our mind.
And is it not he, the mocking poet, who immediately presents it to us through his eyes?
"C'était dans la nuit brune,
Sur le clocher jauni
La lune
Comme un point sur un I.
Lune, quel esprit sombre
Promène an bout d'un fil,
Dans l'ombre,
Ta face ou ton profil?"[2]
If we walk on some evening full of sadness, on the beach by the side of the ocean illuminated by its rays, do we not, in spite of ourselves, at once recite the two grand and melancholy lines: