Excellently bright

Absolutely a beautiful moonrise tonight while I was driving home. The moon truly is full tonight and when it came up it was big and golden. I did not know until someone pointed it out to me a few years ago that the moon looks large and yellow when it is near the horizon and smaller and white when it is higher in the sky.

Sometimes on my drive the moon was behind trees, and it made me think of the line of a song, something like "moonlight through the pines," but I couldn't think of what it was. Now that I'm home, through the miracle of google, I found that line comes from "Georgia on My Mind." For some reason I had been thinking it was some old Linda Ronstadt tune. Googled some more and found "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress," which has the line, "The moon a phantom rose through the mountains and the pine."

Then there's Ben Jonson's "Hymn to Diana":

Queen, and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.

This poem also functions as a compliment to Elizabeth I of England, the Virgin Queen.