Witchery

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!

Frank Dempster Sherman