Stir the fire till it lowe How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon From the slow opening curtains of the clouds Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!

The lines juxtapose domestic intimacy (“Stir the fire…”) with a sudden, elevated vision of the night sky. The moon is personified as a solitary queen emerging ceremonially from “curtains of the clouds,” a theatrical metaphor that turns natural change into staged revelation. The diction (“lonely,” “slow opening,” “midnight throne”) emphasizes both majesty and isolation, suggesting that beauty can be regal yet remote. The movement from hearth to heavens also implies how ordinary acts can prompt imaginative ascent: tending a fire becomes the prelude to contemplating a larger, ordered cosmos, where the moon’s steady “walking” conveys calm authority amid darkness.