FALLS from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning Into the sea where blackness rims the sea, Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold Is only light remaining; yet still gleam The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge Of quiet waves. They were all things of light Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon— Her nuns, dancing within her dying round, Clear limbs and breasts silvered with Moon and waves And quick with windlike mood and body's joy, Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting. An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow, As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools— So slowly, who shall say when light is gone? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SINGER OF ONE SONG by HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF ALEXANDER DUMAS by GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT COMIN' THRO' THE RYE by ROBERT BURNS FOOLIN' WID DE SEASONS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR JOGGIN' ERLONG by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR PROLOGUE, SPOKEN BY MR. GARRICK AT ... THEATRE ROYALE, 1747 by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784) MISGIVINGS (1860) by HERMAN MELVILLE LETTY'S GLOBE by CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER A SONNET WRITTEN BY A NYMPH IN HER OWN BLOOD by CLAUDIO ACHILLINI |