Wallace Stevens - Homunculus et La Belle Etoile lyrics

In the sea, Biscayne, there prinks
The young emerald, evening star
Good light for drunkards, poets, widows
And ladies soon to be married

By this light the salty fishes
Arch in the sea like tree-branches
Going in many directions up and down

This light conducts
The thoughts of drunkards, the feelings
Of widows and trembling ladies
The movements of fishes

How pleasant an existence it is
That this emerald charms philosophers
Until they become thoughtlessly willing
To bathe their hearts in later moonlight

Knowing that they can bring back thought
In the night that is still to be silent
Reflecting this thing and that
Before they sleep

It is better that, as scholars
They should think hard in the dark cuffs
Of voluminous cloaks
And shave their heads and bodies

It might well be that their mistress
Is no gaunt fugitive phantom
She might, after all, be a wanton
Abundantly beautiful, eager

Fecund
From whose being by starlight, on sea-coast
The innermost good of their seeking
Might come in the simplest of speech

It is a good light, then, for those
That know the ultimate Plato
Tranquillizing with this jewel
The torments of confusion