I20 
ANIMA LUNAE 
 
Free from disease and vice, sorrow and age. 
Only death’s joys assuage 
A gathering gladness at the thought of sleep. 
Never in all the archives, scroll on scroll, 
Reaching from aeons wrote they “ Women weep, 
Men hate, the children suffer.”  In the place 
Where men most walked a table of fine brass 
Was set on marble, with an iron style 
That all might carve within that golden space 
If one grief came—and still the people pass, 
And since the city first began 
None wrote one word thereon till one—a man 
Witty in spite of happiness—wrote there : 
“ I grieve because the tablet is so fair 
And still stands bare, 
There being none to beautify the same 
With the moon-curved Arabian character.” 
Whereat the king, “ Thy grief itself removes 
In its own cry its cause.”  And thence there came 
Soft laughter that may hardly stir 
The flowers that shake not in the City of Loves. 
(For so men called the city’s name 
Because the people were more mild than doves, 
More beautiful than Gods of wood or river ; 
And so the city should endure for ever.) 
 
But the king’s mood was otherwise this day. 
Along time’s river, fifty years away, 
There was a young man once 
Ruddier than autumn suns