Tonight the moon, by languorous memories obsessed,

Tonight the moon dreams with more indolence,

Lies pensive and awake: a sleepless beauty amid

Like a lovely woman on a bed of cushions

The tossed and multitudinous cushions of her bed,

Who fondles with a light and listless hand

Caressing with an abstracted hand the curve of her breast.

The contour of her breasts before falling asleep;

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

On the satiny back of the billowing clouds,

She lolls in the bright luxurious disarray of the sky —

Languishing, she lets herself fall into long swoons

Haggard, entranced — and watches the small clouds float by

And casts her eyes over the white phantoms

Uncurling indolently in the blue air like flowers.

That rise in the azure like blossoming flowers.

When now and then upon this planet she lets fall,

When, in her lazy listlessness,

Out of her idleness and sorrow, a secret tear,

She sometimes sheds a furtive tear upon this globe,

Some poet — an enemy of slumber, musing apart —

A pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Catches in his cupped hands the unearthly tribute, all

In the hollow of his hand catches this pale tear,

Fiery and iridescent like an opal's sphere,

With the iridescent reflections of opal,

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

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