What The Moon Brings

What The Moon Brings - Romantic Version

I adore the moon—I yearn for it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and enchanting.

It was in the sanguine summer when the moon shone down on the old garden where I wandered; the sanguine summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with golden light, as if those gentle waters were drawn on in resistless currents to mysterious oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and benevolent, those moon-kissed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks pink lotos blossoms fluttered one by one in the perfumed night-wind and dropped divinely into the stream, swirling away eagerly under the arched, carven bridge, and staring back with the fulfilled contentment of calm, satiated faces.

And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet and maddened ever by the need of unknown things and the lure of the satiated faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths, flowers and shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the gold-litten stream past grassy banks and under graceful bridges of marble. And the lips of the satiated lotos-faces whispered promises, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea.

Upon that sea the tender moon shone, and over its unvocal waves beguiling perfumes danced. And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed for nets that I might capture them and learn from them the secrets which the moon had brought upon the night. But when the moon went over to the west and the still tide ebbed from the sparkling shore, I saw in that light old spires that the waves almost uncovered, and white columns gay with festoons of green seaweed. And knowing that to this sacred place all the lovers had come, I trembled and wished again to speak with the lotos-faces.

Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a silver cormorant descend from the sky to seek rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and asked him of those whom I may yet cherish. This I would have asked him had he not been so far away, but he was very far, and could not be seen at all when he drew nigh that gigantic reef.

So I watched the tide go out under that reclining moon, and saw gleaming the spires, the towers, and the roofs of that ardent, amorous city. And as I watched, my nostrils flared to embrace the enticing perfume of the world's paramours; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the souls of the hopeless romantics gathered for slender sea-nymphs to couple and complete.

Over those pleasures the virtuous moon now lay very low, but the slender nymphs of the sea need no moon to bless by. And as I watched the ripples that told of the twirling of nymphs beneath, I felt a new heat from afar out whither the cormorant had flown, as if my flesh had caught a thrill before my eyes had seen it.

Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I saw that the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef whose rim I had seen before. And when I saw that this reef was but the pink basalt crown of a wondrous eikon whose ethereal forehead now shone in the dim moonlight and whose grand hooves must grace the picturesque sand miles below, I called and called for the hidden face to rise above the waters, and for the hidden eyes to look at me after the quiet withdrawal of that adoring and guileless golden moon.

And to meet this miraculous thing I plunged gladly and unhesitatingly into the scented shallows where amidst welcoming walls and shell-lined streets slender sea-nymphs champion all the world's lovers.