luna radar anul

Lady Luna, in light canoe,
By friths and shallows of fretted cloudland
Cruises monthly; with chrism of dews
And drench of dream, a drizzling glamour,
Enchants us--the cheat! changing sometime
A mind to madness, melancholy pale,
Bleached with gazing on her blank count'nance
Orb'd and ageless. In earth's bosom
The shower of her rays, sharp-feathered light
Reaching downward, ripens silver,
Forming and fashioning female brightness,
--Metal maidenlike. Her moist circle
Is nearest earth. (1-13)

The moon is, cosmography-wise, the first planet of the medieval solar system. She represents the boundary between Earth and the celestial spheres; Lewis remarks that we’ll not get much out of the metaphysical poets (like Donne) if we don’t know what they mean by “sub-“ and “trans-lunary.”

The moon is also associated with lunacy, madness, a wandering of the mind. I’m not 100% positive about all the connections between these ideas of the moon, but it’s not outside our purpose of exploring Lewis’ use of the lunar “atmosphere” to think of the lunatic as someone wandering between the various celestial planes and losing their way.