When heaven reveals her primal stainless blue,
Alone within the firmament there burns
The tiny torch of dusk. What startled eyes
Uplifted from the restless stream first met
The full round glory of the moon! Yon orb
That pales upon the flood of broad Kiang,
When did she first through twilight mists unveil
Her wonders to the world?
Men come and go;
New generations hunger at the heels
Of those that yield possession. Still the moon
Fulfils her phases. While the tides of time
Eat out the rocks of empire, and the stars
Of human destiny adown the void
Go glittering to their doom, she changeless sweeps
Through all her times and destinies. Alas!
The little lives that swarmed beneath the moon,
I cannot count them. This alone I know --
That, wave on wave, the Kiang seeks the sea,
And not a wave returns.
One small white cloud
Threading the vasty vault of heaven recalls
My heart unto her loneliness. I sail
Between two banks, where heavy boughs enlace,
Whose verdurous luxuriance wakes once more
My many griefs. None know me as I am,
Steering to strange adventure. None may tell
If, steeped in the same moonlight, lies afar
Some dim pavilion where my lady dreams
Of me. Ah, happy moon! low lingering moon!
That with soft touch now brightens into jade
Lintel and door, and when she lifts the blind
Floats through the darkened chamber of her sleep;
While leagues away my love-winged messages
Go flocking home; and though they mingle not,
Our thoughts seek one another. In the lilt
Of winds I hear her whisper: "Oh that I
Might melt into the moonbeams, and with them
Leap through the void, and shed myself with them
Upon my lover." Slow the night creeps on.
Sleep harbours in the little room. She dreams --
Dreams of a fall o' flowers. Alas! young Spring
Lies on the threshold of maternity,
And still he comes not. Still the flowing stream
Sweeps on, but the swift torrents of green hours
Are licked into the brazen skies between
Their widening banks. The great deliberate moon
Now leans toward the last resort of night,
Gloom of the western waves. She dips her rim,
She sinks, she founders in the mist; and still
The stream flows on, and to the insatiate sea
Hurries her white-wave flocks innumerable
In never-ending tale. On such a night
How many tireless travellers may attain
The happy goal of their desire! So dreams
My lady till the moon goes down, and lo!
A rush of troubled waters floods her soul,
While black forebodings rise from deeps unknown
And the cold trail of fear creeps round her heart.