by Frank Dempster Sherman

 

Out of the purple drifts,

From the shadow sea of night,

On tides of musk a moth uplifts

Its weary wings of white.

Is it a dream or ghost

Of a dream that comes to me,

Here in the twilight on the coast,

Blue cinctured by the sea?

Fashioned of foam and froth—

And the dream is ended soon,

And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth

Comes now the moth-white moon!