Claire de Lune
Your soul is the choicest of countries
where charming maskers, masked shepherdesses,
go playing their lutes and dancing, yet gently
sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

While they sing in a minor key
of all-conquering love and careless fortune,
they don’t seem to trust in their own fantasy
and their song melts away in the light of the moon,

in the quiet moonlight, lovely and sad,
that makes the birds dream in the trees, all
the tall water-jets sob with ecstasies,
the slender water-jets rising from marble.

Paul Verlaine