Moon-Music

Marvellously bright the bosom of the maiden
Wading across the world's dark river;
Insects over dew-pools wave their antennae
Slowly in the starlight. Cascading quiver
The Moon's thin waterfalls, the voices of the nightingales
In a cold Moon landscape hung above the forests.

Whither is she going, the bright Moon-maiden?
O'er her river-girdled body the stars are dark.
Hears she the music from tiny throats crying,
Drawn like herself in earth's ghostly barque;
Drawn through the Universe, silently spinning,
Maiden and river, and the Moon's waterfalls?

The Moon draws the voices, the shadows of the waters,
To the tops of the forests revolving 'mid the stars,
Spinning so fast that all again is solid,
The tree-trunks standing earth's cold iron bars,
Standing still in the Moon, in the trembling voices—
The nightingales, the waterfalls, the Maid river-girdled.

The Maiden in the river has stopped singing,
Lifting her arms in the middle of the stream!
Cold is its scenery, cold the trajectory
Of bright-haired comets in the Maid's wheeled dream.
And the insects' antennae and the voices of the nightingales
Thinly in the starlight wave upon the water.

Clouds faint and shadowy pass across the river.
The Maiden has vanished, the nightingales are still;
The brightness that girdled her has faded from the water,
The trees' black ecstasy is blotted from each hill;
In the Moon's mountains the waterfalls are darkened,
Wrapped in grey vapour the earth rushes onward.