My Saved Poems Dec '24 onward

The ringèd moon sits eerily 
Like a mad woman in the sky,
Dropping flat hands to caress
The far world’s shaggy flanks and breast,
Plunging white hands in the glade
Elbow deep in leafy shade
Where birds sleep in each silent brake
Silverly, there to wake
The quivering loud nightingales 
Whose cries like scattered silver sails
Spread across the azure sea.
Her hands also caress me:
My keen heart also does she dare;
While turning always through the skies
Her white feet mirrored in my eyes 
Weave a snare about my brain
Unbreakable by surge or strain,
For the moon is mad, for she is old,
And many’s the bead of a life she’s told;
And many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

The hushèd earth, so calm, so old,
Dreams beneath its heath and wold—
And heavy scent from thorny hedge 
Paused and snowy on the edge 
Of some dark ravine, from where
Mists as soft and thick as hair
Float silver in the moon.

Stars sweep down—or are they stars?—
Against the pines’ dark etchèd bars.
Along a brooding moon-wet hill
Dogwood shine so cool and still,
Like hands that, palm up, rigid lie
In invocation to the sky
As they spread there, frozen white,
Upon the velvet of the night.

^{Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες
          —Sappho}

When the moon was high I waited,
   Pale with evening’s tints it shone;
When its gold came slow, belated,
   Still I kept my watch alone

When it sank, a golden wonder,
   From my window still I bent,
Though the clouds hung thick with thunder
   Where our hilltop roadway went.

By the cypress tops I’ve counted
   Every golden star that passed;
Weary hours they’ve shone and mounted,
   Each more tender than the last.

All my pillows hot with turning,
   All my weary maids asleep;
Every star in heaven was burning
   For the tryst you did not keep.

Now the clouds have hushed their warning,
   Paleness creeps upon the sea;
One star more, and then the morning—
   Share, oh, share that star with me!

Never fear that I shall chide thee
   For the wasted stars of night,
So thine arms will come and hide me
   From the dawn’s unwelcome light.

Though the moon a heav’n had given us,
   Every star a crown and throne,
Till the morn apart had driven us—
   Let the last star be our own.

Ah! the cypress tops are sighing
   With the wind that brings the day;
There my last pale treasure dying
   Ebbs in jeweled light away;

Ebbs like water bright, untasted;
   Black the cypress, bright the sea;
Heav’n’s whole treasury lies wasted
   And the dawn burns over me.