Oracles

ANIMA LUNAE II7 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 soundless air 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