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