Martinsburg Gazette

Miscellaneous.

THE LUNAR RAINBOW.

On Monday, the 14th of August, 1848, at about 8 o'clock in the evening, the light of the day having fully disappeared, a beautiful lunar rainbow was visible at Lewisburg, in Greenbrier county, Virginia, which I had the good fortune to witness, in company with some of the Judges of the Court of Appeals, members of the bar and others. The moon seemed full and about an hour high,--a passing shower, travelling from east to west, had been falling,--the rain still descended gently at Lewisburg, and more freely from a dark sky in the west, while the east presented a brilliant moon traversing a field of clear sky bordered at the horizon with fleecy clouds. Such were the circumstances under which our good landlord called us out from the porch into the street to look at the rainbow. As a rainbow at night is a rare spectacle, which many have never seen in their lives and some have never heard of, we gladly ran out into the rain to look at it. There it was, spanning the dark western sky, a beautiful and delicate zone around the black mantle of night.--and though it consisted only of the light of the silver moon, refracted and reflected from the rain drops, yet that light was divided into the true prismatic colors, beginning with the red and ending with the blue or violet. I had seen one lunar rainbow before, but this one was far more perfect and distinct. It continued plainly visible for a few minutes and then faded away. I regretted to lose sight of the lovely stranger and after retiring to my room its image haunted me until my mind found relief in the following apostrophe:

THE LUNAR RAINBOW.
Gentlest of heaven's daughters thou,
The rainbow of the moon!
Rare visitant of earth why now
Bid us adieu so soon ?
Pagans adore thy mystic ray,
And many colored fire;
Of Dian chaste, thou'rt born, they say,
Black Erebus thy sire.
The Christian who, with faithful hope,
Travels through night and storm,
Joyful, at last, sees heaven ope,
And hails thy radiant form.
He sees in thee an angel bright,
A messenger of love,--
A type of the celestial light,
That crowns the saints above ;--
A sign, which in night's stormy brow
In mercy hath been set
'To show, though all be darkness now,
'Twould end in glory yet..

Correspondence of the Richmond Times.