Moon-Bathers

Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning     Into the sea where blackness rims the sea,     Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold     Is only light remaining; yet still gleam     The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers     Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms     Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge     Of quiet waves. They were all things of light     Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon,     Her nuns, dancing within her dying round,     Clear limbs and breasts silvered with Moon and waves     And quick with windlike mood and body's joy,     Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind     Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.     An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam     Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow,     As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone     And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools,     So slowly, who shall say when light is gone?