The Moon more indolently dreams to-night

More drowsy dreams the moon tonight. She rests

Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,

Like a proud beauty on heaped cushions pressing,

Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,

With light and absent-minded touch caressing,

Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.

Before she sleeps, the contour of her breasts.

Upon her silken avalanche of down,

On satin-shimmering, downy avalanches

Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;

She dies from swoon to swoon in languid change,

And watches the white visions past her flown,

And lets her eyes on snowy visions range

Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.

That in the azure rise like flowering branches.

And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,

When sometimes to this earth her languor calm

Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,

Lets streak a stealthy tear, a pious poet,

Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

The enemy of sleep, in his cupped palm,

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow

Takes this pale tear, of liquid opal spun

Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,

With rainbow lights, deep in his heart to stow it

And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.

Far from the staring eyeballs of the Sun.