In the dimming evening, the speaker watches dark sails and fading clouds and feels a quiet dread of walking the streets, where ghosts seem to wait in the shadows. So he stays inside and waits instead for a dreamlike beloved to come to him. She appears not as a solid figure but as something fluid and formless, her hair moved by wind that sounds like faint violins, her eyes shifting like light on dark water. When she approaches down the silent, lost streets, the mood turns hushed and almost sacred: he tells the lamps not to flare, his heart and hands to be still, because he wants to kiss her. The atmosphere is eerie and tender at once, mixing fear of the outside world with intimate longing for a vision.
Irradiations II — Summary
Gaunt sails--bronze boats of the evening-- Float along the river where aloft Like dim swans the clouds die Softly.
I am afraid to traverse the long still streets of evening; For I fear to see the ghosts that stare at me From the shadows. I will stay indoors instead and await my wandering dream.
She is about me, fluid yet, and formless; The wind in her hair whispers like dim violins: And the faint glint of her eyes shifts like a sudden movement Over the surface of a dark pool.
She comes to me slowly down the lost streets of the evening, And their immutable silence is in her feet. Let no lamps flare--be still, my heart--hands, stay: For I would touch the lips of my new love with my lips.