Classic Poem

Crescent moon, again you 're filling
All the sable heavens with light,
Urging the sad poet on to sing,
Spilling
Beams like silver fishes bright
Till they flood the depths of every spring.
Night is drowned in bridal splendor.
Like a charmèd bird the tender
Heart bounds high, 'twixt grief and glee.
Garden sphinxes leer at me.

Blood you sway and billows roaring,
Breasts of women you control,
And you sting the sleeper in his trance,
Pouring
Melancholy on the soul.
In your beams the fool is fain to dance,
In your spark-rain serpents wallow.
Watch-dogs lift their howlings hollow.
Hot hands pray imploringly.
Garden sphinxes leer at me.

Gray my forehead, I forget not;
I have known the fatal snare,
Nature's lure of silent restlessness.

Let not,
Moon, your cold majestic stare
Dupe the heart with longing and distress!
Rouse no more the blood, the ocean,
Stir not women with emotion!
Weary, evermore I see
Garden sphinxes leer at me.

Sink, O stupor of delight, now
On the world, forever freeze
Woman's breast upon her lover's mouth,
Blight now
Love's fair shrine amid the trees!
Drink the font of life and leave a drouth!
By the empty pools lie sleeping
Lovers in the moonlight steeping,
Happy that no more they see
Yonder shapes that leer at me.