I want no horns to rouse me up to-night, And trumpets make too clamorous a ring To fit my mood, it is so weary white I have no wish for doing any thing. A music coaxed from humming strings would please; Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences Across a sunset wall where some Marquise Picks a pale rose amid strange silences. Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh, Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet And it is dark, I hear her feet no more. A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank. A drunken moon ogling a sycamore, Running long fingers down its shining flank. A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown, Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass. Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown- Kiss me, red lips, and then pass-pass. Music, you are pitiless to-night. And I so old, so cold, so languorously white. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT SPRING TIME by COUNTEE CULLEN RENASCENCE by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY VERSES TO -- --, ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR MARRIAGE by BERNARD BARTON SOLOMON'S PARENTS by GORDON BOTTOMLEY OLD SADIE by EDITH CHERRINGTON |