on "black cloud," travels over "the nighting pond, the starry sky."

The poem goes:

Ghostly Twilight

Still at the forest's edge meets
Dark wild game:
On the hill, evening breeze softly expires,

Blackbird's plaint falls silent.
And the gentle flutes of autumn
Hush in the rushes.

On black cloud, you
Drunk with poppy travel
The nighting pond,

The starry sky.
Alway the sister's lunar voice
Sounds through the ghostly night.

The starry sky is portrayed in the poetic image of the nighting pond. Such would be our usual notion. But the night sky, in the truth of its nature, is this pond. By contrast, what we otherwise call night remains rather a mere image, the pale and empty counterfeit of night's nature. The pond and the pond's mirror recur often in the poet's work. The waters, which are sometime black and sometimes blue, show to man his own countenance, his countering glance. But in the nighting pond of the starry sky there appears the twilight blue of the ghostly night. Its glance is cool.

The cool light issues from the shining of Dame Moon (selanna). All around her radiance, as the ancient Greek verses tell us, the stars turn pale and even cool. All things become "lunar." The stranger going through the night is called "the lunar one" (128). The sister's lunar voice forever ringing through the night is heard by the brother who, in his boat that is still "black" and barely illumined by the stranger's golden radiance, tries to follow the stranger's nocturnal course upon the pond.

When mortals follow after the "something strange," that is