Dream of the Luna-Maiden

The evening speaks in whisper tones,
in whisper tones and rattled bones.

In pulsing lights the evening sings,
in pulsing lights and fretting wings.

This night is married to finite ones,
To finite ones and distant suns.

Yet in the midst of all these welded
in the midst of darkness melded,

the borders of th'incessant sphere,
the lumin-globe of fate and fear.

Then the round exterior melts,
and she emerges lithe and svelte,

With light step on descending stair,
with shimmering garb and mirror-hair.

She reaches to me, eyes of light,
with powerful and piercing sight,

Takes my hand and leads the way,
to the place of birth of eternal day.

Then light with fury escapes my lungs,
climbing my trachea's ladder rungs.

Escapes my body, and frees my soul,
dissolves in me the rust and coal,

which coats the slowly dissolving cage
that makes my mind a darker stage.

And I become, yet not in doom,
an eternal prisoner of th'infinite moon.