The Moon more indolently dreams to-night

Tonight the moon, by languorous memories obsessed,

Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,

Lies pensive and awake: a sleepless beauty amid

Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,

The tossed and multitudinous cushions of her bed,

Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.

Caressing with an abstracted hand the curve of her breast.

Upon her silken avalanche of down,

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

Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;

She lolls in the bright luxurious disarray of the sky —

And watches the white visions past her flown,

Haggard, entranced — and watches the small clouds float by

Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.

Uncurling indolently in the blue air like flowers.

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

When now and then upon this planet she lets fall,

Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,

Out of her idleness and sorrow, a secret tear,

Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Some poet — an enemy of slumber, musing apart —

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow

Catches in his cupped hands the unearthly tribute, all

Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,

Fiery and iridescent like an opal's sphere,

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

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