Tonight the moon, by languorous memories obsessed,

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,

Lies pensive and awake: a sleepless beauty amid

Like a beauty who on many cushions rests,

The tossed and multitudinous cushions of her bed,

And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,

Caressing with an abstracted hand the curve of her breast.

Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

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

On her soft satined avalanches' height

She lolls in the bright luxurious disarray of the sky —

Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours

Haggard, entranced — and watches the small clouds float by

In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white

Uncurling indolently in the blue air like flowers.

Visions which rise athwart the blue-like flowers.

When now and then upon this planet she lets fall,

When sometimes in her perfect indolence

Out of her idleness and sorrow, a secret tear,

She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence.

Some poet — an enemy of slumber, musing apart —

Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,

Catches in his cupped hands the unearthly tribute, all

Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,

Fiery and iridescent like an opal's sphere,

Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,

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

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