_Tennyson's In Memoriam._--The word _star_ applies in poetry to all the
heavenly bodies; and therefore, to the _crescent moon_, which is often near
enough to the sun to be within or to be _encircled_ by, the crimson colour
of the sky about sunset; and the sun may, figuratively, be called _father_
of the moon, because he dispenses to her all the light with which she
shines; and, moreover, because _new_, or waxing moons, must _set_ nearly in
the same point of the horizon as the sun; and because that point of the
horizon in which a heavenly body sets, may, figuratively, be called its
_grave_; therefore, I believe the last two lines of the stanza of the poem
numbered lxxxvii., or 87, in Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, quoted by W. B. H.,
to mean simply--
_We returned home between the hour of sunset and the setting of the moon,
then not so much as a week old._