Tonight the moon, by languorous memories obsessed,

To-night the Moon dreams with increased weariness,

Lies pensive and awake: a sleepless beauty amid

Like a beauty stretched forth on a downy heap

The tossed and multitudinous cushions of her bed,

Of rugs, while her languorous fingers caress

Caressing with an abstracted hand the curve of her breast.

The contour of her breasts, before falling to sleep.

Surrendered to her deep sadness as to a lover, for hours

On the satin back of the avalanche soft,

She lolls in the bright luxurious disarray of the sky —

She falls into lingering swoons, as she dies,

Haggard, entranced — and watches the small clouds float by

While she lifteth her eyes to white visions aloft,

Uncurling indolently in the blue air like flowers.

Which like efflorescence float up to the skies.

When now and then upon this planet she lets fall,

When at times, in her languor, down on to this sphere,

Out of her idleness and sorrow, a secret tear,

She slyly lets trickle a furtive tear,

Some poet — an enemy of slumber, musing apart —

A poet, desiring slumber to shun,

Catches in his cupped hands the unearthly tribute, all

Takes up this pale tear in the palm of his hand

Fiery and iridescent like an opal's sphere,

(The colours of which like an opal blend),

And hides it from the sun for ever in his heart.

And buries it far from the eyes of the sun.