C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Clair de Lune

By Paul Verlaine (1844–1896)

YOUR soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,

Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,

That play on lutes, and dance, and have an air

Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

The while they celebrate in minor strain

Triumphant love, effective enterprise,

They have an air of knowing all is vain,—

And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,

That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,

And in their polished basins of white stone

The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.

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