This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,

The Moon more indolently dreams to-night

Like a beauty who on many cushions rests,

Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,

And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,

Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,

Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.

On her soft satined avalanches' height

Upon her silken avalanche of down,

Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours

Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;

In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white

And watches the white visions past her flown,

Visions which rise athwart the blue-like flowers.

Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.

When sometimes in her perfect indolence

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

She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence.

Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,

Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,

Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow

Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,

Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,

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

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