Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol, tr. by Israel Zangwill, [1923], at sacred-texts.com
Who shall tell Thy praises?
For Thou madest the Moon the chief source whereby to calculate
Appointed times and seasons,
And cycles and signs for the days and the years. p. 90
Her rule is in the night,
Until the coming of the fixed hour
When her brightness shall be darkened
And she shall clothe herself with the mantle of gloom.
For from the light of the Sun is her light,
And should it hap on the night of the fourteenth that both of them stand
On the line of the Dragon,
So that it cometh between them,
Then the Moon shall not convey her light,
And her illumination shall be extinguished,
To the end that all the peoples of the earth shall know
That they are the creatures of the Most High,
And however splendid they be
There is a Judge above them to humble and exalt.
Nathless she shall live again after her fall
And shall be resplendent again after her darkness,
And when she is in conjunction with the Sun at the end of the month,
If the Dragon shall be between them,
And both shall stand upon one line,
Then the Moon shall stand before the Sun like a projecting blackness
And shall hide the light thereof from the sight of all beholders,
In order that all who behold may know
That the sovereignty is not with the hosts and legions of heaven p. 91
But that there is a Master over them,
Obscuring and irradiating,
For height behind height He keepeth, yea, and the heights beyond them,
And they that imagine the Sun is their god
At such time shall be ashamed of their imaginings,
For their words are then tested,
And they shall know ’tis the hand of the Lord hath done this
And that the Sun hath no power
And His alone is the rule who can darken its light,
Sending to it a slave of its slaves,
A beneficiary of its own kindly glow,
To becloud its radiance,
To cut off the abominable idolising thereof,
"And let the Sun be removed from sovereignty."