The poem imagines a star dying while the moon looks on, and the moon's quiet response is not relief or fear but longing. The repeated line "and as the star died" works like a slow heartbeat, pulling us back to the same moment while the moon's thoughts shift. At first the moon is just an observer, doing what it always does: reflecting light, watching from far away. The void around it is just as steady, a silent witness.
Then the mood turns. The moon wishes for an ending of its own, one as colourful and beautiful as the star's, but not a copy. The speaker seems to stress that individuality: its own colour, its own debris, its own silence. There's a sense that the moon, which only reflects borrowed light, wants something truly its own, even if that something is death. The final line, "the moon mourned," is blunt and short. The feeling is sad, hushed and strangely envious, and the poem ends without any comfort.