ANIMA LUNAE 39
And all the palace drowsed away
The hours that fanned with silken fold
‘The progress of the Lord of Day.
Yet, as he slept, a grey
Shadow of dream drew near, and stooped
And glided through the ranks of slaves,
Leaving no shadow where they drooped,
No echo in the architraves
As silent as the grave’s.
That shape vibrated to the tune
Of thought lulled low; the stirless swoon
Half felt its fellow gather close,
Yet stirred not: now the intruder moves,
Turns the tune slowlier to grave rows
Of palm trees, losing life in loves
Less turbid than the mildest dream
That ever stirred the stream
Whereon night floats, a shallop faint,
Ivory and silver bow and beam,
Dim-figured with the images
Divinely quaint
Of gold engraved, forth shadowing sorceries.
So the king dreamed of love: and passing on
The shape moved quicker, winnowing with
faint fans
The soundlessair of thought : the noonday sun
Seemed to the mightiest of a thousand khans
Like to a man’s
Brief life—a thousand such dream spans !—
And so he dreamed of life: and failing
_ plumes
Wrought through ancestral looms
In the man’s brain: and so he dreamed of
death.
And slower still the grey God wrought
Dividing consciousness from breath,
And life and death from thought.
So the king dreamed of Nought.
Yet subtly-shapen was this Nothingness,
Not mere negation, as before that dream
Drew back the veil of sleep;
But strange: the king turned idly, sought to
press
The bosom where love lately burnt supreme,
And found no ivory deep.
He turned and sought out life ; and nothing
lived :
Death, and nought died. The king’s brow
fell. Sore grieved
He rose, not knowing :.and before his will
Swan’s throat, dove’s eyes, moon’s breast,
and woman’s mouth,
And form desirable
Of all the clustered love drew back: grew
still
‘*O turn, my lover, turn thee to the South!”
The girl’s warm song of the Siesta’s hour.
lieedless of all that flower,
Eager to feel the strong brown fingers close
On the unshrinking rose
And pluck it to his breast to perish there ;
With neither thought nor care
Nor knowledge he went forth: none stay,
none dare
Proffer a pavid prayer.
There was a pavement bright with emerald
Glittering on malachite
Clear to the Sun: low battlements enwalled
With gold the ground enthralled,
Sheer to the sight
Of sun and city: thither in his trance
The king’s slow steps advance.
There stood he, and with eyes unfolded far
(Clouds shadowing a star
Or moonlight seen through trees—so came
the lashes
Over—and strong sight flashes !)
Travelled in thought to life, and in its gleam
Saw but a doubtful dream.
His was a city crescent-shaped whose wall
Was brass and iron: in the thrall
Of the superb concave
Lay orbed a waveless wave.
Four moons of liquid light revolved and threw
Their silvery fountains forth, whose fruitful
dew
Turned all the plain to one enamelled vale
Green as the serpent’s glory, and—how still!
—To where the distant hill
Shaped like an Oread’s! breast arose beyond,
Across the starless pond
1 Mountain nymph,