A moth sucks at a flaming flower:

The moon beams on the old church-tower:

I watched the moth and rising moon,

One silver tip

Of glimmer, slip

Through ghostly tree-tops, deep with June,

To dream above the church an hour.

The gray moth on the dewy pod

Dreams; and the sleepy poppies nod

Their drugged heads in the languid breeze,

That whispers low

Of some dim woe,

And spirit-like among the trees,

Strews snowy petals on the sod.

My soul dreams at life's blood-red heart

Of that thou art: of thee, who art

All silence: saying something fair

As phantoms know

When moon-flowers blow

And spirits meet: the beauty rare

Of which thou, too, hast grown a part.

My heart, behold, is but a bloom

A pale thought clings to by a tomb,

A tomb that holds the one I love,

All wan of cheek,

Whom, wild and weak,

My heart bows down and breaks above,

Grief-haunted in the moonlit gloom.