Moonlit Cove - Albert Pinkham Ryder

Sorrows of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,

And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest:

While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress

Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;

As on a crest above her silken avalanche,

Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,

And sees a pallid vision everywhere she'd glance,

In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.

When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere

She might permit herself to sheda furtive tear,

A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,

Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,

An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;

Within his heart, far from the sun, it's buried deep.

-Charles Baudelaire