Light and Darkness

In starlight and in dewlight I stood still
Below earth's window where
She drew her garments off. Lightly they fell
Without a sound, soft clouds around her feet,
Until she stood quite bare,
Still as the Moon without; and the quick air
Eddied about.

Silent she stood in that soft robe of blue,
Blushing that Night and all the stars should gaze
Upon her naked and unfenced from life.
She shivered with delight that myriad eyes
Of worm and beetle, bird and woodland beast
In lust pursue
Her beauty in a multiform disguise.

Praying that they
Might keep their power and flash their secret light
Into the dark recesses of the earth,
She felt the bright
Rays of the stars invade her virgin brain,
And her limbs with the falling leaves decay
In silence dyed.

Pale in the stain
Of starlight steeping steadily each leaf and bloom,
The garden drifted through transparent time.
Still she stood there,
A marble cloud among the clouds of light.
Bright from that blossom on earth's outlined hills, the moon
Till, watching from below, I saw her wane,
Snow in dark sudden rain.

The garden was stark blotted out from sight,
The darkness dropping down
Destroyed that cold clear world, but soon I heard,
Above me hugely hung,
A solitary tree gulping the steady rain—
As though a Giant dark-handed had come in,
And closed up Heaven's light.