This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,

Tonight the moon, by languorous memories obsessed,

Like a beauty who on many cushions rests,

Lies pensive and awake: a sleepless beauty amid

And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,

The tossed and multitudinous cushions of her bed,

Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

Caressing with an abstracted hand the curve of her breast.

On her soft satined avalanches' height

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

Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours

She lolls in the bright luxurious disarray of the sky —

In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white

Haggard, entranced — and watches the small clouds float by

Visions which rise athwart the blue-like flowers.

Uncurling indolently in the blue air like flowers.

When sometimes in her perfect indolence

When now and then upon this planet she lets fall,

She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence.

Out of her idleness and sorrow, a secret tear,

Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,

Some poet — an enemy of slumber, musing apart —

Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,

Catches in his cupped hands the unearthly tribute, all

Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,

Fiery and iridescent like an opal's sphere,

And in his heart's depths hides it from the sun.

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